diana does asia!

lovin' thailand the 2nd time around

2007-08-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

well im glad we went back to thailand cause the first time around i totally hated it but this time its been great! we stayed in phi phi for almost a week and it was great. i got sunburnt for the first little while but now im back to being brown after all that time getting pasty in india. phi phi's just really chill, a lot of time spent at the beach and eating. it was very exciting to eat salmon yummmmmm...

considering i spent a lot of time there i dont really know what i did... just beachin' and drinking some buckets. ooh well i noticed that all the foreigners on the island were either irish or english and ive realized they are not as hot as i always thought they were. ooooh well.

oh but one thing i did too is that one day we rented out a longtail boat and we went snorkelling! oh my god it was difficult for me considering i havent gone swimming since i was i dont know, like 11 years old or something. plus i kept hyperventilating underwater! its just not natural to breathe while underwater. but anyway i saw lots and lots of cool looking fish. so many different and vibrant colours and ranging from tiny little fish to big ones the length of my forearm! also coral reefs and i got to see fishies pecking at the reefs and you can actually hear it underwater. it basically looks like what you see at the local aquarium, very interesting. i dont know what the fish are called but i know for sure we saw pufferfish which is fun. then we went to maya beach which is where the movie 'the beach' was filmed and it was nice but a little disappointing, there are much nicer beaches. but in the water there we saw a few baby reef sharks which was exciting.

the boys engaged in some thai kickboxing at the bar, eug got his first tattoo and then off he went to hong kong. me and mini went off to phuket and checked into the sweeeeetest joint ever! we stayed at the most wonderful little boutique resort on kata beach called the boathouse and it was soooooooo nice. our room was great and we had a balcony facing the pool and the restaurant at our place is apparently the best on that whole side of the island and is the only restaurant in thailand to recieve some sorta international wine award so thats fancy shmancy. so of course the food was soooooo goood. our place was right smack in the middle of the beach and right on the beach so the view from the restaurant was amazing and for the times when i was lazy, i could order room service from the restaurant, how sweet is that!? so i ate a whole grilled sea bass at like 3 pm on one day.

anyway, while the water at the beach we went to on phi phi was always totally washed out and shallow, on kata there were some serious waves. so we went boogie boarding which was interesting... it was fun but i kept getting pulled out by the undercurrent and since i cant swim it was a little freaky. oh and by then i wanted to snorkel again but well not in the ocean so i snorkeled for a few minutes in the pool just for kicks. apparnetly i looked retarded.

so thailand has redeemed itself and is the perfect refresher after months in india. oh and its so nice to be tanned and full of good food!

a sad goodbye to india, hello (again) to thailand

2007-08-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

so im back in thailand now but this time im down in the islands. at the moment im on phi phi don which is near where they filmed that leonardo movie, 'the beach'. aaaaaanyway....

so for our last few days in india i just did yoga, fit in 9 hours of painting and shopped till i dropped. it was such good times! i really miss india now, which i guess isnt surprising since i spent such a long time there. but oh the journey out....we took a sleeper bus (which means i got to stay in a disgusting coffin-like box in a bus) to mumbai. which was supposed to take 14 hours. gross already, right? oh but then it turned into EIGHTEEN HOURS. complete with me peeing on the side of the road. and roads that i wouldnt even really call roads. that's not even the worst of it but im not going to further discuss it cause the mere thought of that trip makes me wanna vomit uncontrollably and curl up into the fetal position.

so we arrived at 11 am and i had to spend the day in my dearly unloved mumbai. pros: got to eat at mcdonalds and buy hindi cds and dvds. cons: mumbai. so then it was off to the airport for a nite flight into kuala lumpur, then back to bangkok. it was a truly painful process going from udaipur to bangkok. oh but back on icky backpacker hole khao san road...me and mini were walking down the street proclaiming how they must have really spiffied up the damn place cause it all looks so clean and new! and then when we noticed that we both kept casually glancing down at our feet while walking in case we stepped in cow shit....khao san wasnt actually cleaner....we just werent in india anymore! oh how i'll miss the garbage and cow poopie.

and so it was a nite in bangkok (highlights: mcdonalds with BEEF!!!!! and of course...shopping.)and then next morning off we go to krabi island where we stayed on...ao nang beach? something like that. its been a bit of a culture shock coming from india and it was here that i noticed how wierd it was to walk on actual sidewalks again and that i didnt really remember how to cross the road properly. oh, india!

it wasnt particularly happening and on mini's birthday we ended up at some beach club that only had middle age drunks slobbering all over each other and thai hos. but still fun! oooooh but what i find truly exciting is that i finally got to watch the new harry potter movie! id been trying to watch it since fucking delhi but somehow never could.....so finally we rented a dvd player and bought a pirated dvd and there we have it! wheeee!

and now were on phi phi don as i said and fuck was i ever seasick on the boat over here! another journey id like to forget....but omg my BED here! in india they dont seem to know what a real bed is. i dont think i ever slept on an actual spring mattress the whole time i was there, it was always a thin sheet of foam with flat pillows. oh but my bed here! i have a/c, a spring mattress, fat-ass pillows and a wonderful fluffy comforter! i think i slept for like 11 hours last nite. anyway, its pissing rain down here on the islands but yesterday it didnt so i got a nice afternoon at the beach. white sand and turquoise water, how purdy. oh but now its PISSING rain yet again! the boys have been off since early this morning for scuba diving but i have a gimp lung so i plan on shopping while theyre off. but for now i think its time for lunch! i plan on posting pics REAL soon!

magical rajasthan: land of forts, rats & camels

2007-08-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

so i wrote a blog entry yesterday but due to shitty computer circumstances, it's disappeared forever! so anyway, i left of in jodhpur which is now one of my favourite places in all of india. in the old part of the city most of the buildings are painted a brilliant shade of blue and it just looks so cooool. it's also got this big ass fort on top of a hill towering over the city and you get the best view ever from it, i must post pics soon. the fort was the best fort ever and it had a sweet ass audio guide that's got sound effects and music. c'mon, that's cool! the palace inside was gorgeous and it had interesting things like the handprints of all the wives of the maharajah who threw themselves into the fire after their hubbie died. oh the drama.

oh i love jodhpur. especially cause i bought 5 pairs of camel leather shoes there. and cause i had the sweetest room ever. we stayed in a havelli i think its called which is something like an old richly decorated home that was built by super wealthy people. but as you should have come to know, im not a very reliable source of accurate info. anyway my room was sweeeeet and it had one of those big window seats with cushions (i dont think im very good at describing things anymore. in fact my english has gone out the window. i say stuff now like, "we go palace 50 rupees".) and my room had a big painting on one of the walls. aaaaaahhhh.....

next stop: bikaner. there's not much in the town itself, we went to a fort which was i thought anticlimatic after the best fort in the universe (that would be the jodhpur fort) but we made the trek out here just so we could go to the rat temple. but before that, we went to a camel breeding farm which evidently produces something like 50% of all india's camels. there were a lot of camels. and then we went to the RAT TEMPLE (proper name...no clue) which is whaddya know, a temple filled with rats. as in rats running around, eating (in fact pilgrims go there to feed the rats and then after the rats nibbled on the food they eat it themselves. i did not engage in such an activity), sleeping on banisters, drinking milk.... the rats are holy, something like reincarnated dead people? i could be totally wrong but theyre definitely holy. thousands of rats! one of them ran over my foot and i screamed, a normal reaction i think, but i felt like a tool immediately. wierdest (and coolest) and temple in all of india for sure.

then we went to jaisalmer which is a fort city in the middle of the thar desert. in the middle of the town is a massive fort which is apparently the only fort with people living in it...in all of the world. i think. the town's really quite but inside the fort its like a tourist's playground, just shops, restaurants, guesthouses, all catering to tourists. not the best but definitely a stark contrast to the south of india! in rajasthan i have seen more europeans than in my entire life. apparently all of europe vacations in rajasthan, who knew. anyway the best part of jaisalmer is that i went on a camel safari! i was reluctant and didnt go first thing in the am like the boys cause i refuse to expose my body to that much discomfort via sun and camel, but i did go off in the afternoon for an over nite deal. (we opted to do a nontouristic safari which means its not on the tourist route and you dont really see any other people.) so there i was, just me, my camel and my little 10 year old guide who could barely speak english. all alone in the desert. no one as far as the eye could see. and yes, we were lost.

thank chubby ganesh i had my cell phone which astoundingly had the best reception ever out there! after me and eug exchanged a couple of calls and standing atop sand dunes just accepting the fact we were lost, we finally met up with the boys and their mini entourage. we set up camp behind some shrubs and romped around on the dunes. there was a sand/wind storm for a while (which actually kinda hurts) so sand + sweat = us covered absolutely with sand. it was kinda nasty. then we had dinner that was cooked over a campfire. saving grace, a man who walks from dawn till midnight from his village, came by and sold us drinks! id never loved warm pepsi so much in my entire life. hot water is not the yummiest thing to drink when you're hot already.

it was fun out there, id never seen so many stars before and i saw my first (and second, third..) shooting star! i also saw my first and hundredth dung beetle. yuck! they just roll camel shit around in the sand, i have no idea what theyre doing with it. and they fly too and land on you and it hurts cause theyve got pointy sharp feet or something. however, it was amusing to see them leap retardedly into the fire. one of our guides said its cause theyre suicidal what with life being so boring in the desert, no electricity and such. we just slept on blankets spread out on the sand and next morning more running around on the dunes. and then it was camels back to civilization!

then it was a dreadful 14 hour bus to undaipur, my current and last real stop in india. i looove udaipur. their big thing here is that the james bond film octopussy was filmed here. it's really lovely here, there are palaces on this big lake and it looks really nice. one of the palaces (the one in the movie) looks like its just floating on the lake and you cant even go out to see it unless youre booked in (which is thousands of $/nite) or if you're going out for the super expensive dinner. so we can just gaze at it from shore.

we've been having fun here and today was my busiest day in a while. i got up early for my 2nd ever yoga class, then i went to a 3 hour miniature painting class (i painted a cute elephant that i named kumar), then silver shopping, then us girls went to an all women and children festival! it was really kinda wierd but fun, they had carnival rides, popcorn, shopping and loads of women and kiddies. and in a few minutes, im gonna go get fitted for a coat that im getting custom made (actually me and krista are getting the same coat and we designed it ourselves) and im gonna pick up a salwar suit (oh god is that what theyre even called?) that i had made for me. fun times! so im off!

in the blue city: back to sweatin'

2007-08-03T02:58:00.000-07:00

so were back in india now! but from where we left off....i spent my birthday at chitwan national park and unfortunately we did NOT see any rhinos or tigers! we went on an elephant safari and it was the most uncomfortable thing ever. they stick you on a basket with one leg on either side of a corner pole and its just so bumpy. also me and angelee's elephant (whom we named maya) liked to lead with her left and i was on the left so i got scraped up real good in trees PLUS i got stung or bitten by some horrendously painful bug a few times. it was special! however, it didnt rain which was great and we went all throughout the jungle which was cool. and we did see wild pigs, deer, peacocks and some crocodiles. so still good!

and that morning we had gone on a village tour with our wonderful guide whom i call 'ketchup'. he's so cool, hes been kidnapped and kept in the jungle for days without food by maoists before! what a life story. anyway we got to go into one of the family's homes which i think was basically made out of mud. the kitchen's super tiny and dark with a fire pit for cooking. and then we went to another home where we got an awesome home cooked meal, i dont even remember my last homecooked meal. it was served in a bowl made out of leaves and we got rice, some chicken, veg and some little fried fish that we had bought from a local fisherman we had stopped to take pictures of. we got to park our asses on the floor and eat with our hand and it was really yummy.

then at nite we went only to the best cultural show of all time! we thought no one would go but it was fucking packed with people spilling out of the little concert hall! i think it was called the tharu cultural show and it was all men performing and they had different performances like dancing with fighting sticks combined. 2 of the most interesting acts was one with women twirling around like mad except they werent women....they were men in drag complete with fake stuffed boobies! plus for some reason there was a man dressed as a clown in that one as well. apparently they dont have women in their shows. and then the other wierd one was one man dressed in a giant peacock suit. trust me, it was wierd.

then it was back to kathmandu and we went out for a nite on the town for my birthday and angelee's going away. not really a nite on the town, but we did eat pizza and cake at a nice restaurant and then go to the one niteclub we always went to. but it was all good cause the dj loves us and played us our extensive request list.

after dear angelee left we went to a place just 15 km from the tibet border called the last resort which is where mini and eug went bungee jumping off a bridge. there is zero temptation for me to engage in such an activity. at the resort is my first time staying in a tent! so its like i went camping. and then the next day i went canyoning with mini without really knowing what canyoning is first. i was under the impression that its like sliding down waterfalls but its more like getting into a wetsuit and harness and then walking (more like sliding without meaning to) backwards at a 90 degree angle down waterfalls! i wasnt so prepared for that! the first couple waterfalls i got banged up a bit and i was like fuck i hate this! but then as you get used to it its ok. the last waterfall was 46 meters high and it looked pretty scary to me! it felt like forever before i was even halfway down the waterfall and then you look down and think fuck, im still seriously high up. but afterwards it was a good experience....but i dont know if id do it again! oh PLUS i got seriously leached! as we were walking back up the mountain (this part, very unfun) i got leached a bunch of times; i had like 4 leaches in my shoes and one on the spot between my chin and neck! how sick is that!? the sickest thing is the leaches make your blood all wierd so you keep bleeding after you get them off but its this gross congealy blood. naaaaasty.

so that was my outdoorsy experience in nepal! then back to kathmandu and then we took a day trip to a town called patan. they had a beautiful durbar square which i guess is like the town square and we had a guide show us around. he was cool and is half tibetan half sherpa! my first sherpa. anyway, the square is just all beautiful old buildings and plenty more temples with kama sutra carvings. there was one temple calle the golden temple that was particularly nice. and then we rushed through the museum which happened to be one of the nicest museums ever and is in a renovated old palace! something you woudlnt expect to find. A+ to patan.

and then after some serious shopping, back to delhi. i didnt particularly wanna stay in delhi but we had to and the up side is that i got a mcdonalds fix. and then of all places, we went to a T.G.I.F restaurant for drinks and chicken strips! the next day we went to one of the markets but then got stuck in a giant downpour so it was time to headback.

by the way, ih ladakh i decided that i need to start shopping since i really havnet bought anything for myself this entire time. but then it got a little out of hand....from then till kathmandu ive bought 3 wooden masks, 3 mirrors, clothes, paintings... stuff thats not so fun to carry around! so even though i bought an extra duffel bag (which is now broken, fuck!) it was time to ship some shit out. so $90 worth of post is now on its way back to vancouver....

this morning after a 15 hour train or something ridiculous like that....we have arrived in johdpur aka the blue city. the old part of the city has lots of buildings and homes that are painted blue, something about mosquitos? i dont know but it looks really cool and rising up above the whole city is a massive beautiful fort. so far i really like johdpur even though we havnet really done anything. so 2 more weeks of india pretty much and hopefullyi can find time to post photos soon!

takin' it easy in pokhara/massive photo post!

2007-07-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

so now were in a much chiller town called pokhara and unfortunately seriously heavy rain has been dumping down on us to remind us we're silly and that were here during the monsoon season. but that's ok cause were still having fun! oh and our guesthouse, called the little tibetan guesthouse is the cutest thing ever! its one of the nicest and cleanest places ive stayed, with a pretty garden, and its like $3 per person. i love nepal! yesterday we rented motorbikes and went around in the mountains but it was monsooning on us like nobody's business. however we did see some cool things especially rice pickers and rice paddies which i thoroughly enjoy for some reason.

oh but i forgot to blog about something major! i cant believe i forgot to write about it cause it was one of the wierdest things ive ever seen. back in amritsar, about an hour away is the pakistan border and every evening they have a closing of the border ceremony. and oh what a ceremony it is! first everyone just waits, women on one side of the road, dudes on the other. then when they let you into the stadium seating area (that's right), its like a fucking stampede! women running like crazy, shoes flying, people being trampled if they stop! well practically anyway. so us girls sat in the women's only seats but all the action was really in the men's. it felt like a concert or a festival with people cheering and going nuts. first they select some lucky people to run down to the border and back with indian flags while the crowd goes nuts. there's also plenty of loud dance-y music with an MC or something trying to get everyone pumped. lots of screams of "HINDUSTAN!" which apparently just means india. and then the guards who are all decked out in crazy uniforms and heavy duty moustaches start their thang which includes speed marching and michael jackson style high kicks. this goes on for a while, and the same thing is going on on the pakistan side. then the gates open a couple of times with the indian and pakistan guards shaking hands and such. crowd goes wild. indian and national flags go up, crowd goes wild...flags cross on their way down, crowd goes wild. it's something you just have to see, go youtube or google that shit! anyway, it was greeeaaaat and wildly fun. i wish this kinda thing went down at the canadian-us border.

anyway im gonna attempt at posting pictures all the way back to agra as i mentioned in my previous post. by the way, does anyone even still read my blog!? id like to hear from you! ok so here we go...

at the beatiful taj. some serious photo taking went down here so im gonna try and pick out the best ones. i like this one cause angelee's looking all pretty in her indian suit.

me and eugene doing super asian poses. and yes that's what eugene looks like nowadays.

the taj at sunset on the 2nd day we were there. its so pretty!!!!

me doing the quintessential pinching the taj photo!
we also did jumps and leaps in front of the taj. it took many many takes for me to get this shot so appreciate!

ok and moving on though im in love with the taj and wanna post more pictures of it. beautiful beautiful fabulous leh! this is the view from the leh palace, and then me and mini.

this is inside thiksey gompa during the monk's morning prayer sesh. baby monks!

more of thiksey gompa.
this is a big ol' tibetan prayer wheel.

and here's the thiksey gompa in its entirety. it's amazing looking!

and here's some photos from me and mini's motorbike adventure around leh. me sitting on a rock on a sand dune!

i dont remember exactly where this is, maybe in shey? but i just thought it was a picture perfect shot.

the view from....i think thiksey gompa. through some wax candles that the monks made.

my in the middle of nowhere shot.

and here we are at a giant gaping hole in the middle of the road/ the bridge that was never built. we took a backroad for a portion of our day and here's where we ended up at one point. oh ladakh!

this is at the cultural dance and music show in leh. the women dancers in one of the coolest costumes. i think these outfits are also used for weddings! and the 2nd pic is of the men (including our adorable driver tashi!) doing a dance in celebration of beer! the jugs on top of their heads traditionally was used to hold beer.

ok so even though i have about a million more pics of ladakh id like to post, i have to stop somewhere. so moving on....here we are at the golden temple in amritsar at the crack of dawn!

ok and even though this was totally not allowed, i snuck a few photos inside the temple. it's so cool looking inside, it just had to be done!
ok and here are some pictures taken at the closing of the pakistan border ceremony i was talking about. it just occurred to me that my blabbering about the scene wouldve made more sense if attached with these pictures but apparently i cant cut and paste so here we are. the indian guards in their full regalia!

and here's us cheering on india in the ladies section. angelee, me, joanna and smeghan. the boys were lame-o and sat in the vip foreigners section but we did it up with the locals and engaged in all the cheering and hoopla. oh the good times!

and here's where the pakistan and indian flags meet!ok and now just a couple of pictures from here in nepal cause im tired of bloggin now! kathmandu's really been a whole heap of shopping, eating and drinking but we also got ourselves a stoned and sex-obsessed guide for an hour or so for a tour of the old city. i mentioned before that we saw a living goddess well we saw our 2nd living goddess right in that window. the living goddess is called a kumari and she lives in this building in the old city and she never leaves cept for like once a year during a festival where shes carried around. the kumari's life is fascinating, stuff like they're picked at 4 years old and requirements include zero imperfections on their skin, cant be scared of anything (they put the girls in a dark room filled with severed animal heads or something for one nite and theyre not allowed to show any fear), have to be intuitive, their birthday has to somehow compliment the current king's birthday....and the list goes on. and then as soon as they get their periods or even get a cut or something, theyre back to being mortal! not much fun i think. anyway its fascinating, so go google kumaris! anyway our guide called the kumari to the window so we caught a quick glimpse of her but no photos allowed.

and finally one of the many temple carvings in the old city. our guide was hilarious and loved talking about marijuana and sex. sex and marijuana. and so on. so of course he had to point out all the erotic carvings and i believe this was one of his many favourites.

and so on that note, im off for now! we're leaving pokhara tomorrow am and i'll be spending my birthday at chitwan national park! you can hope for us that we'll get to see some rhinos and tigers!

the taj/ladakh/amritsar/now in nepal!

2007-07-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

fuck i havent blogged in ages! ive been totally meaning to but weve been so busy and now there's just so much to catch up on. well last i left it at, we were in agra...doing the TAJ MAHAL. now the taj is a big deal cause when i first plopped down in india, i had read zero material on the country and whenever people asked what i wanted to see, i just said, "ummm....the taj mahal?" and so it was a very big deal.agra as a city is a total pit. but oh the taj! we went to see it twice, the first time was a little anti-climatic cause we went in the afternoon and it was so hot that i dont think ive ever sweated so much in my life. i say that all the time but definitely that was one of the top sweat days. as in sweatin into my poor eyes that were already being scorched out by the sun/sun reflecting off the oh so white marbly taaaaj. but the taj didnt disappoint and the next time we went, we went at 6 am and took the most brilliant pictures and we also had a guide who gave us the low down on the taj. and when i say brilliant pictures, they range from the ones with the taj and its reflection in the fountain pools, to ones of us doing retard jumping leaps into the air in front of the taj. oh it was so good! i love love love the taj mahal. oh and whats also kinda cool is that on the 2nd day that we went, the date was 7/7/07 which was the day the new 7 wonders of the world was announced...and well whaddya know, the taj is now a wonder!so other than the taj, we didnt do too much in agra. we also went to the agra fort which is where shah jahan (as if i know how to spell his name. but the dude who built the taj as, so they say, a "monument to love" for his deceased wife) lived. it was still cool but really now, it cant compete with the taaaaaaj! im gonna go ahead and say the 2nd best thing about agra is this super sweet MALL! i bought badly needed clothes and there was an arcade! seriously, that's cool. i got to play air hockey, chuck e. cheese/scandia-type games and virtual boxing! oh the good times.and so we moved on from agra to delhi where we got to spend the nite sleeping on benches in the airport and then first thing in the am, we were off to leh, ladakh! ok now there's some serious unresolved confusion here. i thought we were going to kashmir which is right under tibet i suppose. but then some people say no, ladakh is ladakh and then some people say ladakh is a region in kashmir.....so as far as im concerned, we were in fucking kashmir cause that sounds cool!leh was so nice, such a change from the rest of india. its at an elevation of 3500 m above sea level so we had to get all altitude acclimatized or whatever. so bed rest the first day and then taking it easy the next. its really wierd you cant breathe well, need to pee lots and some people get pukey. luckily i didnt barf however my lungs never got down with the altitude so even walking totally horizontal, id run out of breath after like 5 minutes. stupid gimpy lungs! oh but i love leh!!!it's definitely not as hot as the rest of india since were up in the mountains (ok here again, im not sure. we were either in the himalayas range, or the ladakh range. i wanna say himalayas....) and also its a total small town and the air is so crisp and clean! and we only had electricity about a third of the time but i have never seen so many stars in my entire life. the nite sky was amazing and the stars seemed so close and whereas back home you just see the big ones, here you could see them all. i even saw the milky way! (i was a total tool and tried to take pictures of the stars to share with you all. it sooo didnt work). oh and damn the people in ladakh are so good looking! a cross between indian and asians yet even hotter. i dont know if everyone feels this way but angelee and her friend joanna totally agree!oh and leh made for good shopping. they say its the closest to tibet that you can get without actually being in tibet so i made sure to buy some dalai lama scrolls and craploads of tibetan prayer/peace flags. and rolling with the whole tibetan thing, lots of gompas / buddhist monasteries.oh wait, before i forget! we found one awesome garden restaurant that we went to like 3 times a day and i got to eat good food for the first time in so long! they even had AVACADOES. that's major man! anyway...one day we hired a driver and off we went in a van to thiksey, hemis and shey. on the map it would appear that these places are like towns but there more like just...places...with a gompa or something in each. in thiksey they had the coolest gompa built up on a mountainside and we were there super early so we got to sit in with the monks as they were doing their morning prayer/breakfast session. that was really cool. they were just chanting and drinking tea and then there'd be drums and horns going off. at one point baby monks (not really babies but oh they were soooo cute!!!!) would go around giving scoopfuls of what looked just like flour to each monk and they'd mix it with the tea to make like a dough and then eat it. then later they also got bowls of some seriously yummy smelling soup and they ate in silence which is when we decided to leave. i wouldnt want ppl sitting there staring at me while eating! anyway that was really cool.the hemis gompa was also good but just couldnt compare with thiksey and then in shey there was an old palace that we went to. the next day was even better cause me and mini went off on a motorbike to see pretty much the same places cause he was sick the day before. but on a bike we could stop all over the place and spend more time in some places so that was good. so id stop at like a riverside where people were washing their clothes next to sheep and goats. we also stopped right next to what looked like giant sand dunes. another nice stop was we took pictures of ourselves in this giant empty dusty plain with just the mountains in the far background. it looked like we were literally in the middle of nowhere. oh and the mountains in ladakh! ladakh looks kinda like the okanagan cept more deserted. the mountains are beautiful and brown and dusty and further off in the distance you can see snow-capped mountains. its soooo pretty, everyone must go to ladakh! that day we also had a mini-picnic under a tree, next to a stream, in the middle of nowhere. the flowing water in ladakh is so nice cause there's practically no rain so i guess its all just glacial run-off so the water is so cold that its almost grey. (not that you can drink it or anything, for future reference!) our only company after a good long while were some cows. oh and the cows in ladakh are so cute!!!everywhere in india, cows are roaming. but they're all narsty looking. all scrawny and...pooey. oh but ladakh cows! theyre so small and theyre all furry! actually all the animals looked just smaller and furrier....like the cute lil donkeys! awwww....anyway, we spent like a week in leh and it was great. oh the last nite we went to a cultural dance show and our driver, tashi, was in it and it was great! they had different traditional costumes for each dance and it was really good. the dancers also sang and if they had a cd, i would totally have bought it! i miss leh already!and so next stop, amritsar! this is gonna sound dodgy in some racial way but tough lovin cause this is my blog. anyway, as everyone in vancouver knows, most indians in vancity are sikh. oh but not in india! and i never noticed that until i arrived in amritsar which is in punjab aka sikh central. (ok its not known as sikh central...but whatever.) anyway, there's no actual point to be made here, i just found it interesting. anyway, in amritsar is the famous golden temple which i guess is like the temple/religious site for sikhs. it's really quite beautiful. everyone has to have their head covered here and you walk inside and it's like a giant pool i guess (which interestingly, has koi fish in it) and at some points in the pool there are ghats, kinda varanasi but on a much smaller scale. all over the place there are holy dudes sitting behind glass reading their...holy book (i dont know what its called. i just asked mini and angelee. no one knows.) anyway in the middle of the pool is the golden temple which looks like....(let the anticipation build....)....a temple made of gooooooold! all over the joint people are walking around, lounging, praying, reading their little holy book.oh and then the temple itself. there is a massive fucking line up to get into the temple (between 1 and 2 hrs) and inside the temple there are a bunch of holy men with the main holy book (oh god this sounds so uninformed) and some of the men are playing these wierd looking instruments and singing. you can actually hear the music from all over inside the complex and actually it sounds very beautiful. again, id totally buy the cd. good sountrack to sleep to. people are just sitting around inside the temple, reading their books or whatever. the temple itself is quite small i think but with 3 floors and its very beautiful inside. i give it an A+!then as you leave they give you a handful of this wierdy sugary greasy shit that i guess youre supposed to eat? theyve got all sorts of rules and one is that you cant even drop a morsel of this stuff on the ground. by the way, i shouldnt call it shit but i dont know what it is so there you go. oh and i dont wanna bitch but damn, sikhs dont seem to know how to have fun the way hindus do! in varanasi it was such a fun and laidback vibe at the gahts but here i got sternly talked to a bunch of times. for stuff like, my headscarf fell off my head, my back was turned to the temple, i was talking, i sat with my legs stretched out, i sat with my knees propped up..... but overall, good times yet again! oh and one nite me and eug stayed up because there was sposed to be some ceremony at like 3:30am at the temple so we went but failed to see it. however we did find that people are at the temple literally 24/7. people are just wandering around, doing the usual, sleeping on the ground. craziness!and as of yesterday, we are now in kathmandu, nepal!!!! yet another country to add to the list. were staying i guess on the backpackers strip and it's crazy here! super cheap accomodation, awesome food (ive already had mexican food and a massive cheeseburger! yay to the return of beef once again! it was like half a damn cow between the buns. damn.), lots of shopping and an actual nite life. im so pumped to be here in nepal!!!oh and what's really cool (except we didnt know it at the time, booo!) is that we were in the presence of, as well as on the plane with, a LIVING GODDESS. there she was, mere meters away from us in delhi airport. just a little girl all decked out in fancy shmancy clothes and with cool looking makeup on. we thought maybe she was in a beauty pageant or something (so embarassing) and then when we arrived in nepal, at the terminal there were hordes of journalists or something with their flash cameras and we were like "oh thats interesting."and THEN! we were just walking by a newstand and there she was on the cover of the newspaper: the little girl was a living goddess! apparently the story goes she went to the US because a documentary was made about her but now they're stripping her of her goddess status because of it! that just aint right! i still say the kiddo's a goddess.and so that's that! i hope i havent bored you all to pieces but so much has happened since i last blogged! i hope to post pics real soon.

"ganga is the life line of indian culture": just some of my varanasi pictures!

2007-07-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

ok so this computer kinda blows but i cant find anything better and i desperately wanna post some of the kajillion pics i took in varanasi. i think i'll only be able to post a fraction of what i actually wanna post (evidently meghan's spent the past 2.5 hrs posting 60 pics or something absurd like that so please go check that out to tide you over if you care to do so...) so im gonna just post some of my absolute fave pics.

here's one of my first pics of the ganga river. i noticed just now that you can actually see the burning ghats in the background which youre absolutely not allowed to take pictures of...so feel privileged to be able to see that! (by the way its taken like well over half an hour for me to even put the photos onto the computer, so by this point im really not feeling the whole posting pics thing but im doing some anyway...)

sunrise on the ganga which is very beautiful. i think i took like 50 pictures of the sun rising which was highly excessive and im sure all the locals were thinking, "stupid foreigners, how many pictures can you take of the fucking sun?" ok maybe not but something along those lines.

a bunch of women doing their thang down in the ganga bright and early in the mornin'.

ah by the way, i decided varanasi and the ganga calls for black and white photos so a good fat chunk of my pics are b/w. and the above pic is the view from bablu's...platformy thing.

me and our dear bablu having a muscle demo. im so macho.

i forgot to mention in my last post (at least i think i forgot...), i went into the ganga river! ok so only halfway up my calf but seriously. its fucking sewage water filled with corpses! it took days for bablu to convince me to do it. i told him, im gonna get diseased! but he gave me this whole, "but the river is our mother and our mother would never make you sick" talk and what with his whole holiness thing going on, how could i argue? so in i went! here's me, eug and bablu.
and here's our little princess, bablu's niece kajel. cutest kiddie ever!!! at the ganga, as usual, and the kid's all super dolled up! matching earrings and necklace that're colour coordinated with her polyester suit and with a smidgen of lipstick to top it all off! ok and contrast with me, sweaty and in stinky dirty clothes. god i look like total ass.

here's me getting my blessing from bablu

mini, me and pooge right after getting blessed.

just one of the many pictures taken while wandering along the ganga river.

me at one of the ghats where saris are being dried in the sun. oh the scorching, scorching sun.

here's bablu and some of the other priests performing the evening prayer-type-thing ceremony. evidently called puja. so there you have it! i only took about a million pics of bablu doing the puja deal since i was there like every single night but here's just a few of them

ok so that took eons and now the internet joint is closing up so im getting tossed out! there's still lots of pics i wanna post plus videos but i guess that'll have to wait. and now im in agra where i got to see the monumental TAAAAAAJ MAHAAAAAAAL today. cept it was ridiculously hot (that is until it started dumping rain) and i sweat more than i ever sweat before in my entire life. anyway it was still great and we'll be back to see it for sunrise. anyway getting tossed out!

holy varanasi & mother ganga!

2007-07-03T01:33:00.000-07:00

ok so i realize i havent posted anything in a good long while and that's cause weve been hella busy ever since we left the south. in kolkata we fully embraced the fact that we were at last back in a big city so we lived it up. as in i engaged in absolutely nothing cultural and instead spent my days in malls, watched movies (ocean's 13 was fantastic, fantastic four aka eug's choice, not so much.) and went clubbing. ok so i had to go shopping cause in pondicherry one of the hotel staff threw out a bag of my very limited wardrobe that i had dropped in for laundry....it really sucked. and what sucks more is that shopping in india is not so easy at all. since most chicks wear saris, practically all stores cater more to men. im wearing a lot of stinky dirty clothes lately, im so attractive.

so not much to say about kolkata, i dont particularly enjoy the big cities over here. we just kinda indulged in being able to live western-style once again and binged on the worst (or best, depends on how you look at it) food the entire time. as in it was a mcdonalds-kfc-pizza hut-mcdonalds marathon. oh and damn, its expensive to go clubbing in india! we met a new friend, gill, who took us out a few times and it was a total blast but it'd be like minimum $10 for a drink. i guess that goes hand in hand with our whole, living it up like at home.

and in kolkata, krista has sadly departed from our lil' crew for about a month to travel with her aussie friend but we shall meet her again and in her place, mini has arrived from thailand. im sure eug enjoys having some testosterone around once again. and on a very sad note, one of the girls with angelee, andrea, was thrown off a camel in rajasthan and had her hip broken! it's very horrible and she now has to cancel the rest of her trip and go back to ontario. so for those who know her, send her happy healing vibes and best wishes.

anyway in stark contrast to kolkata, we have now been in varanasi for about a week, the holiest of all holy cities. we were only planning on spending a couple of days here, and in fact we were supposed to leave about 3 times already but i wont get into that, but this is definitely by far my most favourite place in all of india and it's been a total blast. as most know, im not big on anything religious but i absolutely love this city.

we've been getting up bright and early every day (as in a very painful 4 am-ish) to go down to the ganga/ganges river. the river is quite a sight: though the water is polluted as hell and reportedly more like sewage than anything else, hindus go down every morning to bathe, wash their clothes, wash their hair, swim, etc. in the river. they call the river 'mother ganga' and it's all super spiritual. all along one side of the river are ghats which i guess are just stairs leading down the riverbank and there are a few burning ghats which is where dead bodies are burned in big ceremonies. a lot of death going on here, people apparently come to varanasi just to die cause of its.....holiness or something. (you'd think after a week here id be super informed about all things ganga but im not. i read/hear something, and then i forget. im so useless.) so along the river banks there are burning bodies all day long but then something like children and lepers who die dont get burned but instead get attached to a rock or something and get dropped into the river. so we've seen a few floaters.

in fact, one man we met who lives on one of the many boats on the river said to us one morning, "do you know what i saw first thing when i woke up next to my boat? a dead body!" and points out just a few meters from us. and whaddya know, a rotting dead body just floatin around!

anyway the best thing to happen during my entire time in india is that we met bablu, one of the priests who lives at the main ghat right on the ganga river. (he keeps saying he doesnt wanna be famous but he's had his photos published in newspapers, books, lonely planet and everyone knows him so too bad for him.) every morning we go down and hang out with bablu on his...platformy thing. yup that's right, i know its like zero descriptive but i dont know what the thing is called. basically a platform on the ghat where he sits and gives blessings. and then pretty much every nite, we go down and watch him take part in this big ceremony which i guess is like an evening prayer. there's a bunch of priests dressed up and there's music, fire, peacock feathers; there's a lot going on basically. i'll just have to post pictures. and then we just hang out and do whatever. and we hang out with some of the local street kids and bablu's nephew and little niece who is just the cutest little thing ever. she's got massive eyes, is super pretty and looks like a little cartoon character.

we also met a very helpful autorickshaw driver/guide, mr. khan, and he's helped us out loads and has shown us lots of things in varanasi. we've seen a buddhist temple, japanese temple, tibetan temple a ghandi temple.... we were also in sarnath which i guess is an extension or something of varanasi and its touted as 'the birthplace of buddhism' so that was pretty cool. we got to see a bodhi tree which is like the offspring or whatever of the bodhi tree that buddha sat under. or something like that. fuck, im just not reliable for that kinda info. anyway that was very interesting.

mr. khan also took us to a muslim community where they produce silk so we got to see the entire silk making process which was really interesting. and the kids there were so cute, we've been followed around and stared at a lot but nothing compares to the scene that was going on there. adults grouped around us for a while but it seemed like every single kid in the entire joint was just following us around the entire time. and they all like mauled us and wanted pictures taken and their hands shaken; it was borderline overwhelming cept i think we're like pros at crowd control by now. oh and then of course, we were taken to a silk store where, of course, i bought a bunch of silk scarves for no reason whatsover. but they're so pretty!

anyway really, just everyday, not enough sleep and morning and nite at the ghats with bablu. oh but a real standout day was yesterday when bablu took us, kajel (his niece), suresh (nephew) and ravi, one of the local kids, to a hindi movie! ok first of all, id been dying to have just a taste of western food for the longest time cause the entire time in varanasi its been nothing but indian food and really, i cant handle that. and then bam, he takes us to an a/c mall complete with real stores, a real movie theater and food like mcdonalds, baskin robbins and pizza!!!! what the fuck!? when he said movie i imagined a real dive theater cause here in varanasi, there's not an awful lot that's modern going on. well apparently this mall just opened in recent years, we were all shocked that such a thing existed in varanasi and it was the happiest day in my life. ok not really but i was damn happy.

side bar, bablu likes to make fun of me cause the only thing i wish for here is a/c. its almost 40 C here and fuck it, ive decided i just cant live without a/c. the amount of sweating that goes on here is practically nauseating. so he says he gave me my wish, an afternoon of fantastic a/c. how can one not love bablu!?

anyway the movie (which at the moment i cant remember the name..i think 'apne'?) was all in hindi minus a few sentences in english with zero subtitles so that proved kinda interesting. but it was easy to follow and it was like the first time ive seen a non-super cheesy bollywood style indian movie. it was kinda like a family drama and about boxing but they still managed to fit in song and dance numbers!! ok so it was a little cheesy and ultra dramatic but i loved it! and then we took bablu and the kids to good ol' mcdonalds. and it was the best mcchicken id ever tasted. (minus the mcchicken in mumbai. and kolkata. minor details.) i didnt think priests could eat meat but bablu seemed to enjoy his mchicken as much as me! and while me and eug think its super awesome and mini thinks its despicable, bablu gave kajel some mchicken which turned out to be the first time she's ever eaten meat! her first meat experience, and it was at mcdonalds, with us. so magical.

oh and one of the coolest things we did here is that all four of us got blessed by bablu one morning. we got our foreheads done up with the symbols for vishnu and shiva (again, or something like that...), got sprinkled with water from the ganga, had a wreath of flowers put on us, had to repeat i guess a prayer in hindi (ok i basically mumbled my way through the entire thing. it was fucking hard!), and then tossed some flowers into the river to make a wish. it was cooooooool.

anyway im off. i really really wanted to post pictures cause ive taken like a million of them and words just cant describe how amazing this city is. unfortunately none of the computers' usb ports are working here so i'll have to do it later. i was just gonna save this post but im posting it up now anyway since its been so long but check back later cause i'll add pics to it when i have the time!

pretty lil' pondicherry

2007-06-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

so im recovered from my brush with death (ok...there was no brush with death. just having 3rd world runs makes you want to die, that's all) and weve been having the best time these past few days. mamallapurum...or whatever it's called was a cute little backpacker's town which was very refreshing because in these past 5 weeks we've seen close to zero other foreign backpackers in india. as in ive only met one. but anyway this place actually had other foreigners and one street completely catered to the crowd so we got good western food and that was fantastic. there wasnt an awful lot to do there, just see some ruins but really im done with ruins. if you showed me one of my own photos of ruins and temples, i probably wouldnt be able to tell you where that picture was taken. there was one giant fucking round boulder that somehow just rested on the slope of a hill which was interesting. how does it not roll down? one shall never know.

a couple of freaky things happened there. one was that somehow everyone in town seemed to know my name. i guess one person i tell then tells oh i dont know..the universe? me and krista were on our little motorbike on the highway when all of a sudden two motorbikes with local dudes on them come up on either side of us and yell "hi diana!!! i know your name! where are you going!?" i was thinking, "how do they know my name!?" whilst krista was probably thinking, "get the fuck away from me before we crash and die!" im guessing thats what she was thinking. so that was freaky cause really, id hate to die in a firey motorcycle accident in india. and that very same trip, the guy on his bike in front of us hit a dog and crashed! it was very traumatizing and all i could do was give him an advil. but it was advil liqui-gel migraine strength! so hopefully my contribution helped.

and now were in a super lovely french colonial town right on the coast called pondicherry aka pondy. its just the cutest! british colonialism just downright sucks when compared to the french. the town itself is very pretty with lots of old french colonial buildings and somehow everything just seems calmer (by india standards that is) and the people dont hassle you.

yesterday we went to one of the wierdest places we've been to so far, a place called auroville. not everyone would describe it as so, but i think its a bit of a cult. by the way, here's the official website for your parousing: http://www.auroville.org/
its a place that apparently belongs to no nation, where money and personal possessions are of no worth and humanity can live in unity. or something like that. i was paying attention to the informational video screening, i swear! basically its a bunch of white new age hippies living without working real jobs and being all good for the earth and humanity and the future and such. they are all about some yoga dude and this dead french woman they creepily (and adoringly) refer to as "the mother". ok seriously, she had good ideas, but how fucking creepy is that!? "THE MOTHER".

so the place is set up in 4 sections...something like residential, international...and then....other ones. and its composed of communes called stuff like 'transformation' and 'serenity'. see, cult-like, right!? and right in the middle of the town is a giant golden globe that looks like science-world called the matrimandir aka "the soul of the city" and inside is a crystal where electronically-beamed sunlight is filtered in and people go there and meditate or something. we werent allowed to go into the matrimandir unfortch. anyway that's auroville! trippy.

and so for the past 5 weeks, minus like one nite out in goa, weve been STONE COLD SOBER. arent you impressed mom? there's just nowhere to party down here in the south! its been a bit shit in that respect actually (but a lot of money saved!) that is until...last nite! me, krista and eug decided to toss back a few drinks on our own and go on a pub crawl! it was great fun minus the fact there wasnt actually a real pub crawl cause all the bars closed at like 11. this doesnt mean we didnt try!

and today we went to the local museum and a paper factory. the workers at the factory were so cute and showed us the whole process and then of course we had to buy stuff. so even though i said i wouldnt buy anything else...well i did. and then we went to the main ashram which, even though ive been reading about ashrams still cant really comprehend what its all about. something about meditating and yoga and way of life. anyway the ashram we went to is where "the mother" is buried and really i found it a bit creepy. but pretty much in the same way i find christianity creepy so no biggie. there they sold lots of pictures of 'the mother' including photos of JUST HER EYES. so she can look down upon you when eating dinner i guess. ick.

oh and of course, the biggest thing: weve eaten BEEF! beef beef beef beef beef. i will never take beef for granted again! for the first time since i set foot in india, ive found beef and ive eaten it. and its been DELICIOUS. so there you have it! and tomorrow we take a bus to chennai and from there we fly up to kolkatta. so its farewell to the south of india...

i had a solid shit!

2007-06-17T03:26:00.000-07:00

and that was a monumental moment for me, not even an hour ago, because i had been afflicted with the infamous and dreaded '3rd world runs' aka 'delhi belly' aka 'ooty booty' (meghan just coined this one, shes quite proud). and now i have survived, but barely. where shall i begin, for these last few days have been...how shall i put it...a shit storm? gross. i so gross myself out.

dont get me wrong, i still love ooty, and would rather get food poisoning nowhere else in india. but the agony began a few days ago when we decided to go horseback riding. i was the only one who'd never been on a horse and we were off on a 3 hour ride through the ooty countryside. or...mountainside rather. i was supposed to have this nice gentle horsey but mine was actually quite a bitch and tried to bite krista, hated meghan's horse and broke into a mad run (or what felt like a mad run to me) and bit her horse's head. that nite i solemnly announced to the group, "my inner thighs are seriously bruised and swollen". and so they were. and the next day my entire body ached like a bitch and life began to suck greatly.

aha and then things took a turn for the worse! oh 3rd world runs. i still have zero food in my stomach. i wont get into the deets cause everyone knows what its like so im assuming you feel my pain. cause i surely felt my pain!!! anyway for a full 24 hours or something like that i barely moved from my bed. satellite tv to the rescue, as usual! actually i think brad pitt saved my life for me and meghan stayed up watching 'snatch' and 'legends of the fall' and then magically the next day (as in yesterday) i no longer had runs. which is a damn good thing cause at 6 pm last nite we departed on a horrid journey on a 15 hour 'ultra deluxe' bus. and by the way, when they say 'ultra deluxe' they mean yucky hell hole that wouldnt even begin to qualify as public transport back home. they had bars on the windows for fuckssakes, how is that safe!? and our tire popped which apparently takes eons to fix. and then when we finally got going again, they apparently had to change the spare they put on so alas, we had to stop again. basically it was prolonged hell. and then when we arrived in chennai this morning, we hopped onboard a crowded local bus for a couple hours and now here we are, in mamallapuram. and it's hot. how i miss ooty already.

anyway, i hope the worst is behind me and now we've finally got internet that doesnt totally lick ass so im gonna post some pics!

so i took this picture last nite. remember from way back in january when i posted a picture of a squat toilet in china? ive come to terms with the fact that i have to occasionally use a squat toilet. i still hate them and i'll never like them but fine, theyre toilets. but what the fuck is this!?

apparently this is a toilet. krista's describing it as a female urinal. i'll have to describe it in words cause i could only take a shaky bad photo for i was clenching my nostrils and tried to take the photo as quickly as possible. basically it looks like a trough that a pig eats out of and i guess you just hike up your sari and piss on the floor that is on a slight angle so the pee just flows down into the...drainy thing. id rather save my 2 rupees and piss on the side of the road in front of traffic.

at the local market in goa, a man selling cabbage. wearing a cabbage leaf on his head to top it off.

religious men strolling through the hampi bazaar.

those giant boulders i was talking about in hampi. im in the picture somewhere...

me and krista in hampi, overlooking one of the ruins. my pants are so see through.

the scenery in hampi was really cool. like a journey back in time. woooooooo.

me and meghan on top of some...ruins...overlooking some....ruins.

apparently these are ancient elephant stables.

the maharajah's palace in mysore. unfortunately we couldnt bring cameras inside the palace which was much more impressive than the outside. i still really really wanna watch aladdin.

our one group shot! minus eug that is who took the picture. this is all the people that have at random times, been travelling together in india. from left to right, meghan, andrea, joanna, meghan (2), then in the front, krista, me and angelee. this is in pretty pretty ooty.

tea plantations in ooty. the view was so nice AND it was cool temperature! perfect.

on our little excursion out to coonor, we went to a botanical garden where they had a little man made pond or something plus a children's playground. here are some local tourists making use of the see-saws after we led the way and hopped on them way ahead of them. we are such pioneers.

this is...some view we had in coonor. maybe it was dolphin's nose? or something like that. (perhaps you'll wanna go look at meghan's blog afterwards. shes just so much better at things like...place names and...activities.)

alright that's all the pictures ive got patience for. im really hungry and hoping i can stomach more than half a cracker for dinner tonite so wish me luck!

lovin' ooty!

2007-06-12T04:53:00.000-07:00

i love ooty....but i hate this fucking internet cafe!!! im ready to throw all of these computers against the wall cause theyre fucking stone age and barely functional. but aaaaanywayyyyy....

we're still in ooty and i love it here cause its nice and cool and reminds me a lot of vancouver. there's lots of evergreen trees here and driving through the forests its a lot like stanley park. plus it smells like eucalyptus here which is nice. oh yeah...and it rains!

now eug is back in the troupe and all 4 of us are holed up together in our sweet ass hotel room, living the life and enjoying our satellite movie channels and the national geographic channel. india is so educational!

by the way, i wanted to point out how we now dispose of our garbage here in india. one day in hampi i asked a man (let's call him...antonio)where the garbage bin was...

me: excuse me, where's the garbage?
antonio: ha ha ha, throw it on the street!!!
me: what!?
antonio: you're in india!!! now throw it!

and he laughed and laughed and stared at me till i hesitantly chucked the garbage on the street. i tried to pick a large crack in the street. i felt awful. (and now wasnt that a delightful little script right there? based on true events.)

moving on...oh i had forgotten to say, we experienced the maddest thunder and lightning storm of all time in hampi. our electricity went out and the thunder was absolutely deafening that i dont think any of us really got any sleep that nite. and the lightning was so frequent and bright that our room was completely illuminated. i can honestly say that i did not enjoy that nite. anyway...i thought it was worth mentioning! and speaking of hampi which unfortunately is associated with hell hole hospet due to sheer proximity, our stalker is STILL calling!

oh speaking of negative experiences....posting! in mysore i wanted to send home some pillow cases and random junk. little did we know the difficulty that was to be involved. first of all, the post office didnt provide any material whatsover for packaging. so some dude took us into an alley filled with cows, poo and coconut husks (?) and left us there for a good while. he comes back with cloth, measures my package and then leaves again. he comes back with what now resembles a pillow case and sticks my shit in there and sews it up by hand. so that was how my package got sent home: in a fucking cloth pillow case. time was a ticking already and im highly impatient so i wasnt happy. then the workers at the post office were goddamn useless as well. apparently they dont have pens. oh reeeeaaaaallllllyyyy. anyway it ended up costing me a mini fortune and then that's that. everytime i want to buy souvenirs from now on, eug has been instructed to tell me: remember, you have to post it! so mom, dont expect anything else from me for a while. and please actually open and look at the things i send home to you! where is the love!?

anyway, angelee and her waterloo pose were also in town with us for a couple of days and it was nice to see them again. we went to a tea plantation and a tea factory with them which was really interesting. we learned that practically all words for 'tea' in different languages is based on the chinese word for tea. i found that interesting anyway.

today we got our own driver to take us on our own little private tour to the neighbouring hill station town of coonor which is like a less developed ooty. it was lots of fun actually and he took us to all the touristy spots there and the scenery and landscape were amazing. fields and fields of tea leaves and were high up in the mountains so you can see for miles. (not that i know how much is a mile...but its miles.) we also drove by a military weapons training center where they had cardboard cut outs of hand painted army dudes in camo outfits which i found highly amusing and not the least bit intimidating.

oh and my old cell # still doesnt work here but i do have a (tentative) new one:

+919902409943

me and eug had a quasi competition to see who would get the first phone call and hes already had at least 2 attempts from people and ive had ZIP! im super choked! he pointed out that perhaps its cause no one had my new number but still i doubt anyone tried. please call me.
and that's that, i cant think of anything else to talk about right now. apparently im losing my short term memory cause i cant ever remember what it is i wanna blog about. and when i do remember things, it comes up at random hence the complete lack of continuity in my post. anyway, its time to get some dinner and then go home to watch "speed 2: cruise control". (yup thats right. we get reaaaaallly excited to watch bad movies nowadays. im so pumped for speed 2!!!)

NOT sweating! in ooty

2007-06-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

ok so its taken me like over 20 min to even get this god forsaken computer to work and then maybe another 10 to log into blog so im feeling a little agitated right now!!! but aaaanyway...

were now in ooty which is i guess the most famous old british hill station in southern india...and its cold here!!! well cool but yesterday when we arrived it was mad raining and flooding so out came the gortex once again! and the hoodie...and the runners... ok there were a few things i wanted to write about so now i gotta try and remember.....

ah i wanted to say, travelling is catching up with me and im quite tired and getting lazy nowadays. so my saving grace? movies!!! we had a marathon session at the sweetest movie theatre in goa; pirates 3 and shrek 3, one after the other! rather intense but all the while enjoyable. lookit that people back home, ive watched pirates too! and ooooh my love of satellite tv. after hampi (which by the way, we didnt have electricity for 24 hours), we were in mysore for 2 nites and there we indulged in 2 horrible but oh so satisfying chick flicks: bring it on again (or something like that) and the perfect man starring heather locklear as hilary duff's mommy. you see? obviously horrible. BUT these 2 movies provided 2 of the best (or worst) lines ever!

bring it: "make like a tom....and cruise"
perfect man: "love is like friendship that's on fire"

i feel like ive now shared something really special with you all.

moving on...in mysore we went to the maharajah's palace which was really cool. lots of gold, silver, stained glass from glasgow or something like that...we had a cute little guide too who got all angry at some dude who was trying to listen in on his ....guiding. all the while i just thought to myself, "man, id love to watch aladdin right now!" mixed with "i wish i was a maharajah!!!"

and then yesterday we arrived in ooty! i am so in love with the fact that im not hot. oh and weve seen 2 unichs!!! and yes that has zero connection, but im trying to remember all the things i wanted to write about and thats one of them. i dont even know how to spell unich, but they were my first and they just look like ugly dudes wearing saris.

anyway, we thought wed go ultra ghetto and stay in a seriously cheap ass dorm at the YWCA.....SUCH A MISTAKE!!! we didnt actually stay there cause i swear the place was fucking haunted!!! (ok and meghan pointed out that maybe its cause me and krista are highly impressionable cause we were watching documentaries on hauntings and such the nite before but i dont think so!!!) it was the creepiest place id ever been in. it was massive and looked like a really fucking old nunnery and they took us down this looong hall passing all these empty rooms, and the bathroom which was fucking padlocked!! to our room like deep in the bowels of the building. the room was dark, dreary and and dank. and looked like something out of a horror movie. krista just brought me a croissant and adds that maybe its cause we were (attempting) to watch the movie "house of wax" the nite before as well. but probably, people have been murdered there. it was horrid. meghan's guidebook even said it was not a good place for women.

OH! and krista just reminded me, since it was the YWCA, it was VERY christian. there were signs about jesus all over the place and one read that he was the head of the house and the "silent listener" thats always present. HOW FREAKY IS THAT? so glad we didnt stay there. (meghan wanted to go back today. shes insane)

now instead were staying at a pimp hotel that looks like a whistler chalet! and i watched an intense star wars marathon last nite so im happy.

i cant remember what to write so im looking to krista....the busride here was awful. we were in a mini bus and the driver tried to rip us off by telling us we had to pay more than our bus tickets fare to drive through a national park. it was on the main road anyway. speaking of being ripped off, people here are relentless. in mysore this guy initially tried being friendly with us so wed go to his store but when we refused he told us to go get elephantitus and die. also he told us were arrogant, have big egos, and are like americans. he really knows how to insult us canadians!
anyway, the bus ride. all along the road had big signs that said "hair pin turns!!" and the corners were seriously insane. i think were all bruised and our backs are killing us. ok i cant think of what else there is to write at this point....

so "giddy up and keep on going" - krista

big ass boulders of fun in hampi

2007-06-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

ok short blog cause the internet here sucks ass. first of all, that phone number doesnt work right now cause appppaaaaarreeeenttttllly that phone company doesnt work in this province. so i bought another sim card with another company but now im in some tiny town where there's no signal. so there you have it; you'll have to wait to get your friendly covos with me.

so we've left the brilliant beaches of goa to escape the monsoon...only to find ourselves spending the whole fucking day on a train which was 4 hours longer than we were told. so by the time we arrived we decided to just stay in the town of hospet. MASSIVE MISTAKE. hospet = hell hole of death and destruction. maybe even worse. when meghan updates her blog im sure she can expand on that. it was all that i imagined india to be in terms of suckiness. it's stinky, overcrowded, insanely noisy. i saw an emaciated bottomless man being eaten by cows for fuck'ssakes! and we had a stalker who would incessantly call krista's cell phone and then keep showing up at our hotel room. plus all the men there were pervy and a rickshaw driver came to our room and peeped through our keyhole. (by the way its just me, krista and smegs now. eug come back and protect us!!!) there is absolutely nothing positive to say about hospet. no one ever go there!!!

but do go to hampi! its roughly 5 billion times better than hospet. which is where we are now, a mere 30 min. away from hospet. i dont know the history of the place (aha, but meghan does!)...something about the centre of the empire down here int he south way back when... anyway what i do know is this place has the craziest landscape ever. gigantic boulders just all over the place and amidst the boulders are ruins and temples. we spent this morning roaming around taking sacreligious photos of each other in a temple. (i am on msn with my sister debating how to spell sacriligious. we dont know. and now i just used a different spelling so hopefully at least one is right but i doubt it.) anyway, im getting lazy from this heat so i think i'll go retire in our room for a bit...even though its only 10:30 am.

2007-06-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

for friendly conversation, a "good time", or your daily horoscope, call me at +919 850 464 130

the monsoon is upon us!

2007-05-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

we got caught up in a fort on the top of a hill right on the coast today when a taste of the indian monsoon swept upon us. the thunder and lightning were definitely dramatic from up there but nothing beats hard, soak-through-your-clothes-in-2 minutes-flat rain. yuuuuuuccccckkkk....now 3 of us have decided to finally do some good ol' blogging.

im gonna attempt to put up a bunch of pictures, depending on how much patience i have. this computer better be at least somewhat fast...and were off...

back in luang prabang, laos, this is the procession of monks in the early morning:

and here's a lovely waterfall that we went frolicking in. going home from the waterfall is when eug got leached. LEACHED! you can read allll about that on his blog if you havent already.

and now here i am riding an elephant for the first time! i look freaked out. maybe cause this elephant tried to murder me (sarah, i can be overly dramatic too! and i love you for reading and commenting. i love you 4-eva.)

more elephants! elephants!

im still not done with the elephants. baby elephant!

me, mini and ed up on...lets call it the sacred hill...in luang prabang. a hill filled with sacredness. eugene nods but i dont know if hes nodding in honest approval.

the pretty view from the hill:

and now onto india! oh india. this is the....gateway to india!!!! how very dramatic! in mumbai.

from there we took a boat to the elephanta caves and here's me and the lovely krista with a lovely, lovely family. the 2 little girls are the awesomely cute girls that have become my email buddies! basically what you see here is what many locals now have on their cameras. us + babies, families, women, men, children... so sometimes i figure hell im posing, i should get a picture too!

and this is a diana's eye-view of being a tourist attraction for the locals. actually people also want us to take their pictures...im not exactly sure why but...why not!

and this is at the ellora caves. i was gonna describe the caves.....but i am admittedly completely uninformed so go read meghan's blog. she actually reads her india book thoroughly whereas i not only not read one....but i dont even own one. this is the entrance to the main cave, very impressive eh?

and as a natural progression of photo posting....INSIDE the ellora caves! me and krista have taken to vainly be each others photo taking partner hence there is an abundance of photos of just me. there were 7 of us i swear...its just not that evident in photos....

more ellora cavey goodness.r

and then the next day we went to the ajanta caves. again...read reference meghans blog. what i do know is that the caves were set up in a funky horseshoe shape. that is all.

me and krista sitting up on a ledge in one of the caves. one of the locals was highly concerned for our safety and urgently made us get off the ledge....and then he wanted to see the photo and thought it was fab. photo credit goes to the beautiful (and widely loved by the local men) angelee.

and this is me inside one of the unfinished caves. i thought this one was extra c-o-o-l.

and now here we are in goa! this is at one of the markets and i thought this lady was just absolutely adorable. adorable!!!!

a cow + local tourists + beach! oh india!
href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dNNL32OiZhw/Rl1zLo84bsI/AAAAAAAAAwY/BXilkOFtyuY/s1600-h/dee+024.jpg">

and this was this afternoon, mere moments before the monsoon hit! eugene in the gateway to the fort.

goa!

2007-05-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

im losing motivation to blog cause well, im with a large number of people that were actually reading my blog....but im gonna keep going anyway at least for the sake of my mom. mom, everyone elses parents write them, why arent you writing me!???

anyway, were in goa now and we love it! finally, today's the first day where i havent set foot on any mode of transportation and its fantastic. i dont particularly recall the last time i blogged but we saw a bunch of caves and then went back to mumbai to catch an overnite train to goa. the trains here i thought would be worse than all the others ive been on but not particularly. except every time we passed through a train station, there was an overwhelming stench of human excrement. anyway..... and now were in goa! were staying in a great guesthouse right on the beach in a place called anjuna.

we went to a market yesterday and now were all decked out in jingly anklets. im planning my next purchase already: mc hammer parachute pants. im gonna look so hot! last nite we went to the only club thats open here cause unfortunately and wierdly, theres an election going on so no booze past 10 pm! and practically everything is closed cause of the monsoon. we still managed to have fun and it was great going otu with my girls again! and today we just lounged around on the beach so that was great. and now im gonna go eat my dominos pizza delivery. i can no longer focus on the blog cause krista's harassing me to go home so im off!

"Incredible !ndia"

2007-05-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

so weve made it hear to india! i really wanted to post some pics but indian internet hates me and wont let me. more like im just impatient but thats not the point.

back in our last week in luang pragbang we went on an elephant mahout experience for 2 days which eug did last year and highly recommended. it was tons of fun we got to ride elephants and wash them in the river and i must say, riding an elephant can be a slightly frightening experience. i like to be dramatic and say i nearly died when on our first elephant ride, i was sitting on the neck and our elephant whom i named mary (and then later on was renamed crazy mary) decided to veer off course and go eat branches....right over a giant ditch. i only got very concerned when our mahout (the elephant's caretaker) put a death grip on my arm and was shouting at the elephant who refused to listen. so that was interesting. then i got to ride another elephant who's blind in one eye and i named bessie. she veered off course as well and bonked her head on a tree. then it started dumping rain and she wouldnt let me off. i had such good luck with the elephants.

to wash them we got to ride them down to the river and with us on their backs they just dunk themselves right into the water up to their trunks. we used big bristley brushes and just rubbed them down good. i got mary again and she pooped during her bath. overall, elephants = A+ good times!

and then for my last couple days in laos i checked myself into a swanky hotel and took a hot bath with the air con blasting which is just completely unnecessary but oh so enjoyable. and on our last nite in laos we headed off to an authentic laos disco! there was first a live band when we got there and they played a very extended version of 'happy birthday' which the locals seemed to love. but then they also played 2 akon songs to which i thought, "is 'i wanna fuck you' really an appropriate song for this place?"

and so me and eug bid a sad sad farewell to laos and headed off on our unmerry way for we were about to depart on a long long journey to mumbai, !ndia (eugenes estimating 37 hours. and im doing the "!" cause thats their whole tourism motto and i find it amusing.) we indulged ourselves by taking a flight from luang prabang back to vientiane (laos air is apparently either termed 'flying tuk tuks' or 'flying coffins') which saved us from going on an overnite bus. the plane is the smallest ive ever been on, with only 15 rows, and it is not for those with a weak stomach. i was very very glad when we landed. and then we took an overnite train to bangkok, flew to kuala lumpur, and then finally to mumbai! and now here we are: me, eug, angelee, meghan, krista, and 2 of angelee's friends from waterloo.

on our one full day in mumbai we took a boat ride to elephanta island which had....caves. me and eugene are both drawing blanks right now to what exactly was on the island. (we are very very tired.) but it was excellant, that i will recall! the most outstanding thing so far is that locals are in love with us. madly in love. we get treated like movie stars and everyone just wants to take photos with us. (or they'll video record us when we walk by which is a little wierd but sure why not) i dont particularly understand the fascination with me since i aint white and im so tanned now im practically brown but its all good fun. people shove their kids our way, want their kids to kiss us, and entire families will get their photo taken with us. actually i just got an email from 2 little girls we met on the island saying they miss me and want to be my friend; now even i think thats cute.

and today's been a long day, we set off at 5 am in a van we rented that had AC!!!! and it took about 7 hours for us to get to our new location, a town called aurungabad. we went to the ellora caves which was absolutely fantastic. basically caves carved into the mountain but the main cave had giant sculpted buildings in it. everyone else knows more details about the caves so perhaps theyve blogged about it now (i am so useless) so perhaps you should read their posts as well.... it kind of reminded me of angkor wat. but really more than half our time was spent posing for the locals' photos but no complaints here.

anyway it is damn hot here but no monsoon yet so so far so good. and though ive been steadily packing on the pounds my entire trip i think finally the weight gain will stagnate cause the heats totally reducing my appetite and im just not loving indian food the way i love...all food. but anyway i think this joint's closing up and we now have an a/c room to look forward to going home to! so hopefully i can post some pictures soon but, mom and everyone home, dont worry, ive made it to india alive!

the h2o ed.

2007-05-15T04:02:00.000-07:00

so were still having a super good time in laos and now were in luang prabang which is a UNESCO world heritage town. its really pretty here with lots of old french colonial buildings mixed in with buddhist temples set against a great landscape. cant say weve done too much this time around cause its a damn lazy town and its really hot here. but weve strolled through town, checked out some of the temples, hung out with monks (even though i cant touch them or their belongings cause im a lowly filthy female). today, well the first half of the day, was very busy. we got up to see the procession of hundreds of monks through the streets collecting alms at 6 am. basically the monks just slowly walk through the streets and people sit on the side of the road putting alms, usually balls of sticky rice, into the monks'...collecting buckets (we dont know what theyre called but me and eug figure collecting buckets is the best description). oh and in laos the locals always eat sticky rice. they roll it into little balls and dip it into the different dishes. and then today we had a half day cooking lao food cooking class! apparently jamie oliver filmed a show at that school so we figured it cant be that shit and really we ate more than cooked but it was good fun. and at the end we got our own little sticky rice baskets and a certificate! my certificate says my name is "DLANA CMAN".

anyway i wanted to post water-themed pictures. or more just like pictures off of mini's camera cause its waterproof which can come in damn handy.

ok this has absolutely nothing to do with water but whatever. back to thailand, this ones taken on koh sahn road with the canadian couple, ken and rachel, that we had met way back in china beach and that mini and ed were travelling with while i was in japan. ken's from nova scotia and loves matt mays so you really cant go wrong with him.

and heres basically the only good picture from the full moon party! note that we are totally drenched to the bone but were not pussies, we kept on truckin. also note that i was surrounded by nothing but irish men which can prove to be an interesting experience.

ok and then back to laos! this is from the day we went caving and this is the water cave where we had to pull ourselves along a rope inside the cave while floating about in a tube.

here we are, mere seconds away from embarking on our first ever river tubing adventure.

and tubing away down the river....

and heres us chilling at one of the bars along the river while we went tubing.

ok and me being athletic. or more like everyone else wanted to go kayaking so i had to but it turned out not so bad at all. roughly 5 million times better than cycling.

sabaidee from laos! / all the photos ive been meaning to post...

2007-05-11T06:42:00.000-07:00

so eugene has now officially joined us here in vang vieng, laos! we've been having an absolute ball here but im gonna try to exert some discipline over myself here and finally post pictures cause i shouldnt be so damn lazy. so here we go!

lets go back to my honeymoon with joolia (although really, you shouldve already checked out her pictures on her blog!)... us at the osaka aquarium! she actually bought the professional version of this photo and we look all hot and airbrushed in it.

i was ceaselessly amused by these little cartoony animals that went along with every display at the aquarium. oh those japanese; so cute!

me and joolia's idea of absolute heaven: our osaka hostel living room. take out curry, tabloid mags and the LION KING. can you feel the love tonite?

me and joolia riding mechanical furry animals in kobe. we fucking laughed our asses off the entire time as we were moving oh about 30 cm/minute or something super high speed like that.

my beloved moo cow baby and joolia's newly acquired totoro spending quality time together in kobe. now separated, just like me and dear dear joolia. i think im going to cry myself to sleep tonite.

here we are, at the GRANDEST CASTLE IN ALL OF JAPAN-DOM!!!

the a-bomb dome in hiroshima.

me and joolia at the start of our last nite together in fukuoka!! sniff, sniff...

and so then i was back to s.e. asia: bangkok. this is some...temple-y place next to the palace. note the sexy outfit i was forced to put on.

and this is the palace! pretty snazzy eh?

a giant golden reclining buddha, in case you couldnt tell by the picture.

and this was my 2nd place of residence in thailand, koh phan ngan. ok now ive totally forgotten how to spell it but thats life. this was taken on the back of our motorbike at the top of one of the many freaky hills on the way to town.

and now im in laos! laos laos laos! it was dumping fucking rain back in thailand almost the entire time but it is fucking sunny and scorching up here! and weve been doing stuff nonstop so its such a nice change, i love laos. we took a local bus for almost an hour to get from vientiane to this place named buddha park. did i mention that in my last post? apparently i have no short term memory. anyway, heres a hyper technical aerial shot of me and the park.

and after 2 nites in vientiane, weve been living the indian jones life here in vang vieng. on our first full day here i made the massive error of thinking yes, i can indeed ride a bicycle for 26 km, why not? i swear i was duped into thinking it was a short distance. plus i think id forgotten i suck at, and hate, riding bikes. more like i hate pretty much all physical activity but we wont get into that now. plus its what, 35 degrees? i was near death the entire time and my ass had never suffered so much anguish and i still cant sit properly. annnnnnyway we biked out to go caving. the scenery here is absolutely gorgeous and we got to go into one giant cave that was filled with what're they called...stalagmites? and just huge ass caverns. heres us walking with our local guides to the caves, then me and ed reliving our indy jones pose from marble mountain and me just being a tool.

we also went to a water cave where we dragged ourselves along inside the submerged cave by rope while floating in big rubber tubes. i gotta get pics of that off of mini's nifty waterproof camera later. this day also marks the arrival of eugene! complete with fucking DREADS. yes everyone, our worst nitemare has come true. hes even got synthetic hair knotted into his own hair. i have yet come to love it.

anyway, the next day (which i also have no pictures for right now cause we just used minis camera once again) we went on a minority village trek which was lots of fun. we went to 3 villages and in one we visited a school and the kids here are just so damn cute as well! those cambodian babies have some serious fucking competition. our guide was awesome and so much fun. he was big and jolly and acted like a big kid. and he built us a fire and we got a nice bbq lunch next to the river. and then we spent the rest of the day doing what this place is famous for: tubing. basically floating down the river in a tube and stopping at bars along the way. the boys also preoccupied themselves for most of the day with swinging into the river. there was a wide assortment of awkward landings in the water.

and then today the boys rented motorbikes and we basically spent all day riding around in the countryside. it was eugene's first time driving a motorbike so it was quite monumental. we went into another cave today and this one was a little freaky. the other big cave we went into was also pitch black dark but this one was more like muddy tunnels that we were crawling around in. needless to say, today was one helluva dirty day. then the next pit stop we made was at a lovely lagoon that had seriously clear water and lots of fishies swimming around in it. and again, laos is just fucking beautiful, everyone should come here!

and here's a manly shot of the boys on their little playthings. the boys + motorbikes + dirt + road dust + me = the ultimate laos experience.

and by the end of the day, this is what i looked like. dirty dirty dirty. ed's laughing at me for posting this picture but i want the world to know i can also become one with nature and travelling has changed me as a person. or, i can just look really assy and dirty.

finally in LAOS!

2007-05-07T08:35:00.001-07:00

ok so first off, im sorry that theres been a complete lack of photos but i seriously just cant be asked. plus im 'busy' doing....something or the other. also the time it takes to post them just plain pisses me off and it makes blogging a not so positive experience...but i'll do it soon anyway!

so im finally in laos which is such a relief after thailand. im not gonna knock thailand cause i was only in bangkok and koh phan ngan, basically a week in each place, but i cant say i looooooved thailand. anyway bangkok was good, we basically lived on koh san road for the entire time but it was much needed rest. and mini's friends started arriving and off we went down to one of the southern islands, koh phan ngan, for the infamous full moon party.

unfortunately, from the moment we left bangkok, mini was mad sick for like 4 days, plus there were crazy thunder and lightning storms pretty much the entire time so we didnt get to do much. i really wanted to just lie out on the beach and tan but the rain kinda stopped that shit from happening. (although we had a clear day at the end and i got a bit of sun. and then on the very day we left (at 6 am, ugh) it was super sunny.) plus i was also unhappy with our first place of residence, a gathering of bamboo and wooden huts run by a mad woman with dreads. and the place was called MUNCHIES. 'nuf said. honestly, bamboo huts are a great novelty....at first. but then it just loses its charm. especially when its dumping rain, water runs out every couple of hours, and we were apparently fortunate enough to have one of the huts that had a western toilet....cept there was no toilet seat. anyway we were there for i think 3 nites and then id had enough and we moved like 1 min away to fantastic bungalows which were the exact same price (which i was kinda choked about cause fuck, we shoulda moved sooner!) and then all was lovely.

anyway, the island is just crazy. the landscape itself is pretty nuts and the roads are not so good. we lived about 20 min from the main beach and roads were just going up and down massive hills the whole time. on a motorbike going uphill, the bike would almost pop a wheelie or stall out and start to slide backwards. even going uphill in the back of a pickup, the truck would kinda stall out. it was like going on a rollercoaster cept a potentiallly fatal one. basically everytime we were on the road, i thought i was going to die. so that was fun!

as for the full moon party, it was just like a giant ass dance party on the beach. tons and tons of people, lots of music and LOTS of fucking rain! when we first arrived it was raining sooo hard we were completely soaked right off the bat. and then come the buckets! as those who have gone know already, you just drink these beach buckets filled with a strong mix of an entire micky of 'vodka' (soo not vodka, just strong shit in opened smirnoff bottles), red bull and a can of pop. it was good times. everynite there were parties on the beach, complete with buckets as always but the full moon was definitely the biggest party.

and then from there we took a boat, bus, flight back to bangkok just to take an overnite 13 hr bus from bangkok here to LAOS!!! it was a damn long journey but as of yesterday morning we are now in vientiane, the capital of laos! for a capital city theres not much going on but its a nice breath of fresh air after the madness of thailand. we havent done much but were staying in a lovely hotel for not too much money...and its got a bathtub!! and a flushing toilet! and a tv with movie channels! living in the lap of luxury man. but yeah theres really not much to do here (or we just didnt do anything...take your pick) but its nice. today we hopped the local bus for a 50 min or so ride out to a place called buddha park which was just a funky place filled with statues of buddhas and other deities. there was even a giant pumpkin-y looking structure with a tree poking out the top that you could climb up to the top of and look out over the park. thaaaat was interesting.

anyway im happy to be in laos and im happy to be back w/ my laughing cow cheese and baguettes. tomorrow morning we get on a bus and head to vang vieng and then soon sweet sweet eugene will be there to see me! my first taste of home in 4 months! and hes bringing me underwear and tampons cause hes my hero. what more can a girl ask for really?

lazin' around in bangkok...

2007-04-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

so i'll have been in bangkok for a full week and i cant say i know exactly what it is weve been doing...

i can start off by listing all the wierd shit you can get here on khao san road:
-brass knuckles
-taser guns
-dreadlock and cornrow extensions
-'lacoste' shirts
-tattoo guns
-pad thai cooked up on the street for 20 baht which is less than a dollar
-fake drivers licenses, journalist passes, diplomas...
-'fucking good beer' and 'very strong cocktails. we dont check id'
-and of course, piercings and tattoos.

anyway, i find that you can get all that kind of amusing. lets see what have we been doing...well our guesthouse has a 24 hr restaurant that has a big ass tv thats constantly showing dvds so that takes up a good amount of time. on one day me and mini saw a thai movie, i think it was called 'me, myself'...something like that. it was kind of like a love story involving a drag queen who had amnesia, fantastic! really theres just been an awful lot of us wandering up and down khao san road, kind of like what everyone else here seems to be doing, and me whining about me being fat. thats the honest truth!

the wierdest thing, i ran into a girl i had class with at ubc right here in my guesthouse the other nite. what are the chances? so that was cool and we went with her and her friend to check out one of the infamous ping pong shows. im assuming everyone knows what that is but if you dont, its basically a strip club that has tragic girls pulling wierdo tricks using their *ahem* 'private parts' (thats for my parents whom i know are reading this!) it was actually horrid. they had some hot chicks up there but also really fat and old ones and it was the latter whom were performing the tricks. and i got hit in the fucking head with one of the ping pong balls (and again, for those who dont know, this means the ping pong ball that was shot out of the dear woman's vagina)! i gave my hair a seeeeerious wash when i got home. and i dont know what's up here but back home strippers have to be at least semi attractive. but not the ones over here! they were wearing shit like polka dot bikinis, socks with panda bears on them, just some seriously homely underwear. yuck. some other tricks we saw were pulling razor blades out, smoking a cigarette... all the while the music would periodically stop so the announcer could shout out "ping pong! pussy! ping pong! lady pussy!" it was a magical experience.

oh and i had my thai massage class which was good but im afraid i dont remember even half the shit i learned. i also got more massages which is actually even more fun. today we went to the weekend market which is just an insanely huge market, something like 1500 stalls! a little overwhelming and i didnt get as much stuff as i wanted so that was a bit sad but it was pretty crazy.

ah but we have done some touristy shit. we went to the palace and...some temple... ok i dont remember what its called but its joined with the palace and had incredible looking buildings and statues. and seemingly the thai just love anything gold and sparkly so there was a hell of a lot of that going on. if i ever stop being so fuckign lazy ill be sure to put up pictures. fuck, i frustrate myself with my laziness! anyway...that nite we went to see a traditional thai masked dance performance which i thoroughly enjoyed. have you ever seen the musical movie 'the king and i'? well its like the performance in that movie (mom and reyna, you know what im talking about!) cept way bigger of a production and in a really nice venue. it'll sound fucked up but basically it was about a white monkey and he has to perform all these tasks to help out a god or something... oh and im sure youve seen it, but i think its really cool how the performers' fingers can curl backwards, it mustve been a painful process to get that going on. anyway, it was really nice to go to a real production in a theater again.

oh and the guy that sold us the tickets was such a doll, we got the tickets at the palace and he was so super enthusiastic bout the show, wanting us to spread the love of thai culture or somethign like that. he even gave us a mad discount on the tickets something like from 1200 to 700 baht and we got super good seats right up near the front cause he reeeeaaaaallly wanted us foreigners to go see it. and when we arrived at the theater, he was there waiting for us cause he wanted to give us the brochures for the show, how lovely is that?

and yesterday we went and saw a giant ass reclining golden buddha. it was really impressive cept i put a damper on the whole thing myself cause i was grumpy as fuck and then i was inappropriately dressed so i had to shell out 5 bucks to buy myself a sarong i dont want. and then when i got in, they made me put like a fuckign table cloth over my shoulders as well cause apparently my tank top was still inappropriate even though other chicks were wearing the same shit! so basically everytime there are pictures of me at some touristy place, im either in some rental outfit of a mans dress shirt and sarong, or me wearing rags. but anyway i'll shut up cause really its not that tragic. so today we head down south for the big full moon party. i dont really know how i feel about it all but we'll see! and mini's friends from ireland are slowly arriving here in increments so soon i'll be surrounded by irishmen which should be interesting (joolia i miss you and your estrogen!)...

hello from the land of lady boys

2007-04-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

so im in bangkok now, staying just a block away from the infamous khao san road. i really am not sure about how to spell anything here cause i just havent put in the effort but thats how you pronounce it anyway. were staying at a guesthouse thats apparently israeli exclusive so im having a bit of a bad time with the computer here cause it keeps switching back to hebrew... anyway i really havent done much here but i gotta say, its been a fucking hard time adjusting back to the heat.

and for joolia, i miss you already! who else will listen to an eclectic mix of ashlee simpson, the stars and the supremes with me? who else will eat that much food with me? no one, thats who. not that ive taken to eating less of course...

so i guess the biggest thing that i can write about is the drama that i endured on my way back here from tokyo. so i flew out of fukuoka at nite and arrived in tokyo around 11. the info desk at the domestic airport gave me instructions on how to get to the international airport so i went along my merry way. they said to take the train to a certain stop and then catch a cab from there so off i went. but when i got to the stop and hopped in a cab, i found out that a cab to the airport cost fucking $230-300us! and of course cab drivers dont speak any goddamn english so im sitting there writing the yen sign plus ? on pieces of paper and waving around my remaining 4000yen which is only $40. thats when the cab driver would kick me out of the cab. this trend continued for a little while till i almost cried. i think my heart broke, just a little. if its possible to get your heart broken by this kinda thing that is.

so anyway i end up going to the police box where they basically told me i was fucked cause the next train to the airport wouldnt leave till 5 am and it wasnt even 1 am yet. aha, but i still didnt shed a single tear cause im so macho. the police were pretty much entertainingly helpful. they radioed in another cop who could speak better english and after a long while of them "researching" what i could do, 2 cops ended up escorting me on a 20 min walk to a 24 hour restaurant where i could fucking sit and wait till 5 am. and the cops were hilarious, theyd wanna see my passport, wanted to know where id been in japan, where i was going next, how old i was (this was asked following some man-giggling and they said "im so sorry to ask, please forgive us....but we want to know your age. im so sorry!") it was a good time. and then they even drew me a detailed map complete with "you are here!" telling me how to get from the restaurant back to the train station. how lovely is that?! yeah and so basically that sucked balls realllllll bad. the whole trip fucking sucked but i dont even wanna think about it right now so you'll just have to believe me that it did. and so i arrived literally stinking and dead tired. i had bags under bags under bags under my eyes it was so shitty. and i knew i was comgin back to unbearable heat but i guess you cant really prepare yourself for it. like a fucking wall of fucking heat!

anyway bangkok is good times though. id been warned by some people that it totally sucks here but im enjoying it minus the scorching heat. the people here arent very friendly at all though and its not as cheap as i thought itd be but i gues thats how it is. khao san road is so insane it doesnt even make sense and youd have to see it to believe it. its all just restaurants, guesthouses, bars, stores, stalls and its just crawlign with foreigners. and all along the street people are getting their hair dreaded or braided into cornrows. you can even get dread extensions which i think is kinda retarded since every other minute im wanting to chop off even more of my hair caus its so goddamn hot (EUGENE YOU BETTER NOT EVEN BE CONTEMPLATING DOING THIS SHIT!). but i guess its the thing to do here, even if youre not a fucking hippy you have to look like one or something.

but yeah i havent really done anything cause ive been so damn tired and hot (and im sorry if im just ramblign but im on a time constraint and im really full and hot and cant really focus). what was exciting is theres a giant 7 floor mall or somethign thats got theatres, shitloads of stores and stalls and even baskin robbins yet again. i bought up all this clinique and whatever shit in japan cause i thought i wouldnt find it here, or id eat shitloads of baskin robbins cause i thought there wouldnt be any here but well whaddya know, there is! anyway im running out of time and i was hoping to write a spectacular post but im well aware this is barely mediocre. i'll try again next time! oh and as for pictures, joolia posted shitloads on her blog so just go under the links section cause who knows when i'll finally get my shit together!

oh and yes, ive seen lots of lady boys. and boys that are still boys but want to be ladies. and yes, you can usually tell they used to be boys. oh and for some reason, more than anywhere else ive been, everyone here thinks im thai. thai people will be like "why arent you speaking thai to me?" or "youre from canada? but you look thai". so poogene, you werent the only one. anyway im gonna start tryign to be more productive, tomorrow im gonna do 2 hours of a thai massage course so that should be interesting.

our japan honeymoon

2007-04-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

so im leaving fukuoka tonite for tokyo, sleeping in the airport and then making my way to bangkok the next morning. but before i leave, me and joolia are going to write a blog together.

were referring to our time together as our honeymoon because all we do is romantic date things. for example: watching the sunset at osaka harbour, strolling along the canal in fukuoka, romantic dinners with long drawn out conversation, massages in bed. theres a lot more because every single day was romantic, but we feel that we dont need to divulge any more information because its private.

were gonna do pointform from now on, because were hungover and lazy.

- things we love about japan:
- boys in kyoto
- japanese yogurt
- man bags
- japanese curry
- karaoke
- the shinkansen bullet train
- totoro stores
- street ramen noodles
- green tea and cherry blossom soft serve ice cream
- heated toilet seats
- train and bus conductor uniforms, complete with white gloves. and bowing.
- plum wine
- convinience stores. particularly family mart and lawsons station.
- being near the ocean, cause it reminds us of home
- the general landscape
- daiso! everything for \100
- fuzzy blankets. practically our hostels have had nice fuzzy warm blankets and we both loooove blankets.
- baskin robbins (particularly mint chocolate chip) and hagen dazs (i know weve listed a lot of food. we love food and have spent roughly half of our money in japan on food. thats kinda gross. weve gotten kinda fat).

so were in fukuoka and yesterday we spent the day in an entertainment complex comprised of 6 buildings and we just shopped our little hearts out. there was yet another totoro store and we tried to leave without buying anything, but we almost cried and had to go back. joolia bought a totoro apron.

yesterday was magical because, whenever we needed something, it would just appear. first being, i really wanted to try a mos burger and we had spent the previous evening wandering around in the cold in hiroshima looking for one, but failed to find one. then in fukuoka, we gave up, and it just appeared. (however, i never ate one.) and then we were looking for atom boy souveniers for my little cousin but couldnt find any. so we decided to give up, and whaddya know, an atom boy store appeared right then and there! (so louise, look forward to getting some shit in the mail soon.) and then we were looking for a place to go to celebrate the end of our honeymoon. wed heard of a place called dark room but couldnt find it. when we decided to give it up, it also just appeared! (it sucked though and we left) oh but most importantly! we wanted to find people to hang out with cause were lonely and the situation seemed dire. but then, we got picked up by the US navy!

so the sailors took us to a club called happy cock which was basically filled with nothing but us, locals and the us navy. sooo, whatever you may think of the us navy, you are right. every single sailor was a total character. for example, there was the black guy who thought he was usher and went gliding around the dance floor picking up skanky japanese girls.　there was the big white boy who went insane when eminem came on and brought it with his intense white boy rapping skills. there was the big brawny hispanic guy who didnt seem too bright up there but was lovely all the same. then there was the white boy who seemed like he came straight of king of the hill. he said stuff like, "one nite, i was stuck in an elevator with a couple of A-RABS who had towels on their heads and tried to kill me". or "russians are evil, a russian girl tried to kill my friend but i saved him by pressing the close button on the elevator". we were slightly appalled by this but really we found it more entertaining than anything. he himself was like "yeah, im a total hick. i hate americans!"

fortunately for me, my date for the nite was a nice boy named matt from missouri. hes very lovely, hated the navy, and took very good care of us for the evening. unfortunately for her, joolia had some boy named leo leached onto her for most of the nite; he was like a fourteen year old boy who said stuff like "in case you didnt notice, im interested in you" which caused joolia to laugh in his face.

by the way, i finally had a sausage mcmuffin. we didnt get home till 6 this morning so i finally was actually awake for mcdonalds breakfast. it was soooo good. i was actually supposed to check out at 11 this morning but it just couldnt happen. however, i managed to roll out of bed around 9 to go ask if i could pay for an extra half a day at the hostel and thankfully i was. we didnt get up till after 1 pm.

now joolia will type away: so this afternoon we wandered, zombie like, downtown to find food. we wanted one of two things. curry or mos burger. we ended up with curry and it sure hit the spot. as you can see, our days revolve around our meals. after we finish one meal, we plan for the next meal. anyway, after lunch, we bought a final souvenir and mailed out the last of our gifts. so now were back at the hostel recuperating. dee leaves for the airport in a couple hours so we will probably sleep (or at least i will sleep as she packs). but i will surely be dreaming about how i will miss her. awwwww....
actually, we have become strangely connected because our dreams always involve each other. every morning we wake up and recount our dreams to each other. i had one with a giant fish that dee insisted she could return to water. and dee had a dream involving antonio banderas, harrison ford, lucy lui as twins, and me of course. my theory is that our dreams always reflect something we saw or talked about that day.

we feel so sorry for whoever is reading this because it doesnt really make sense to anyone but us.

so thats all from us as we end our romantic honeymoon in japan. pictures to come later.

say no to nukes! greetings from hiroshima

2007-04-19T05:55:00.000-07:00

so now were in hiroshima but we are leaving tomorrow for our final destination, fukuoka. i was going on today about how we just dont have enough time to blog about everything we wanna blog about, and then we forget shit. so even though im damn tired and lazy right now, im gonna write something, just for the hell of it. umm so last we left off....we were in kobe! we had a great day just chilling out but when we arrived at our hostel, we almost started weeping cause it was in the middle of some fucking industrial zone and the hostel was on top of a mechanics shop. but alas, looks can be deceiving cause the inside was great and we spent the nite watching dvds. oh wait! a highlight of our time in kobe: we rode these ridiculous furry mechanical animals, i rode a panda and joolia had a giraffe or something. they went stupid slow and we just laughed our asses off the entire time. its hard to explain withougthe next day we dragged out a poor boy by the name of jon from england, whom we decided looks like harry potter when he laughs (this may or may not have been influenced by the fact we watched harry potter the nite before), out to himeji which is home to what they say is the grandest castle in all of japan. its go grand or go home for us, ya know! were just like `pshaw, why see any other castles in japan, when were going to see the BIGGEST AND GRANDEST CASTLE IN ALL OF JAPAN!?` and so thats how it went down. we had a great time at the castle, i think its supposed to be the only one in the country thats not all renovated and shit. i:ll post pictures soon...i just cant be asked right now. and from there, we took the good ol bullet train to hiroshima!

and so here we are now. last nite was a little pathetic cause for some reason every single person in our dorm decided to go to bed like at 10pm or some shit and we had no lights in the room. so i ended up reading in my bed with some dude:s flashlight for a while, it was a little bit tragic. but today was good, we coudlnt drag our asses out of bed for a good long while but when we finally did, we took a little ferry over to the island of miyajima where theyre famous for having some gate out in the ocean. its one of japans top scenic sites or something. (it was good, but not THAT good.) you can apparently cover the island in like an hour, but knowing us, we took more like three. there was eating involved of course. also everytime were near the ocean we get all pumped and sentimental about vancouver. basically anything that reminds us of vancouver, we linger around and rave about it.

ok and before i go on, for anyone who isnt exactly sure, hiroshima:s the city that had the first ever nuclear bomb dropped on it by the americans during wwii. im just putting it out there in case anyone didnt know and didnt wanna feel like a complete tool by having to admit it! not that you should feel like a tool for not knowing...anyways, moving on.　and then for the depressing part of the day, we went to the a-bomb dome, the war memorial peace park (ok, im not sure what its called but it might as well be called that) and the museum dedicated to the nuclear bombing and its victims (ahem, again...not exactly sure what its called. ok i just pulled out my little pamphlet, its called the hiroshima peace memorial museum). it wasnt particularly fun, but like the killing fields, its just something you gotta do. there were quite a few japanese seniors there that we thought might have a heart attack over it all, but everything was fine.　there were bits that were a little sick, like bits of dead peoples finger nails and hair, totally uncalled for!

and then to brighten us back up, we went into one of japans many open air shopping arcades and then had a yummy italian meal. me and joolia do nothing but romantic date type things you know. and yes i know i mention food more than any one person should. and now im trying to think of what else ive missed..... fuck i dont know. i do know weve covered lots of ground here in japan! weve been to tokyo, kyoto, nara, osaka, kobe, himeji, hiroshima and tomorrow fukuoka. thats a shitload of places in 2.5 weeks i think we actually dont even have enough time to go to one small town i wanted to go to thats famous for having 10x more carp than people. why i wanted to go there, its hard to say. anyway our time managements a little off but weve been having a great time so no complaints.

i swear i had shitloads of stuff i wanted to write about but now my minds just drawing blanks. but i have noticed that i managed to ramble on here for quite a long while so apparently im very gifted at writing about nothing. i know im missing tons of stuff cause weve been living it up hardcore but...nope its just not coming to me. did i mention we went to a temple that had like a thousand bronze buddhas all lined up in it? i think that was in kyoto. we also went to the world:s largest wooden building and that was in nara. oh god my brains just not working (i swear, ever since i graduated...) what yall should do is go read joolia:s blog instead. its under the links section. im sure hers is much more comprehensive and not as retarded as mine cause i know that when i was off writing about deer in nara, she was talking about the giant buddha. apparently we have different priorities. ok so now my brain feels strained cause im all irritated at myself for not remembering what weve been up to, so i think i:ll go soothe myself with some gossip blogs.

earthquake, whale shark, the lion king & videos!

2007-04-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

i tried to sum up the last few days here in the title by the way. so weve arrived in kobe now and weve been having a great time. part of that great time was us experiencing our first big japanese earthquake! its not like those baby ones we get back home, this one shook our entire building for at least 10 seconds. it was really fucked up cause i was actually napping in the bottom bunk bed and was woken by the mad shaking and i didnt even move cause i had no idea what was going on. by the time i realized it was an earthquake, i just...also didnt move, which in immediate hindsight seemed super stupid but all is well and it was quite exciting! so that:s that.

back in kyoto we spent yesterday at this awesome aqarium where they have a whale shark, saw a 3D imax about ocean life narrated by johnny depp and kate winslet (yes, these are the kind of things that we get really excited about) and then went back to our hostel, lamenting the fact that we had to leave. we absolutely looooved our hostel cause its a converted penthouse apartment so we had a nice living room, kitchen, cable tv! it was the most homey place ive been in since leaving home. in fact, joolia says it felt even homier than her home in kumumoto!

anyway, we had our shit all packed up and we were struggling to leave when oliver, the owner of the hostel, convinced us to stay by offering the nite there on the house! how awesome is that!? so it was great, we curled up on the couch, watched the lion king and had a couple of gossip magazines within arms reach. and then today oliver took us and a couple other people from the hostel here to kobe and showed us around. it was also great being in a car again! anyway, shout out to oliver, cause i know he:ll be reading this!
but anyway, what i really wanna do is just post a bunch of videos that have been accumulating on my camera. im not so inclined to write an actual post right now cause dvds, a flatscreen tv and a couch are just a few meters away...

oook so im very hesitant to post these but i know theres some demand: its kyoto karaoke time. me and alex 1 doing barbie girl. i havent even watched this video in its entirety. i think id cry. do yourself a favour and not watch this but if you are so inclined, then be warned, its not going to be pretty.

joolia and ben doing the YMCA. i wish i had the much more embarassing video of her doing sir mix a lot:s i like big butts.

backtracking now, the little cambodian girl at angkor wat that embodies the reasons why angelina jolie became an adoptaholic she tries to work the whiny sad kid angle but then just looses the facade when she realizes shes on camera.

and heres 1 of 2 battambang bamboo train videos. i think this one was taken when the train was still going slow so it looks pretty lame but you get the gist. and i just cant be bothered to post any more videos, im just getting too impatient and id rather be sprawled on the couch. hopefully i can get my shit together and post more soon!

pimpin it out in nara

2007-04-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

so me and joolia are living the ultimate good life here in nara! somehow we got mad hooked up by joolias aunt (sorry dont know where the apostrophe is on japanese keyboards)and were paying $50/nite to stay in the poshest hotel of all time! we even got two fantastic buffet meals at the hotel for free. we dont know what:s going on really but we wont question it cause its too awesome. anyway we dont have too much time at this internet place so i:ll make this speedy. were doing our laundry right now and we had just accidentally dried our dirty clothes first..but now its all in order. anyway, so here we go!

me and joolia absolutely delighted at the front gates of disneylandsea! it was the happiest day of our entire lives.

of course we are fans of retarded disney head gear.

the embodiment of our day at disneyland:

cherry blossom viewing while eating cherry blossom ice cream. yummmmm.

at the gibli museum in tokyo! joolia:s on the ball and got tickets months ago cause thats how intense people are about this joint. we love totoro forever! (i dont know if you all know what totoro is but its a japanese animation film that we both watched when we were kiddies. looooooooove totoro.)

the shibuya crossing. i think its supposed to be the biggest or busiest pedestrian crossing in the world or something and its like all traffic stops and people just walk zig zagging wherever.

joolia ordering dinner from a vending machine. more like were in a restaurant, but you pick what you want on the machine, put your money in and then it gets cooked and a waitress brings it to you. sure, why not!

our time in tokyo was pretty crazy, it was a lot of fun but we had to switch hostels three times cause thats how difficult it is to book a place to stay there especially during cherry blossom season apparently. our 1st nite was at the most awesome place, the 2nd was the biggest dump that we almost cried and our 3rd was super cute with a living room covered with tatami mats. and then we moved onto kyoto, where the hostel was also a bit of a dump but not hella depressing like the one in tokyo. plus we met a mish mash of english boys that were plenty of fun. and here we are eating!

from left to right its joolia, yoshi, alex and big ben. and in the middle is yummy okonomiyaki.

and its karaoke time! 2 nites in kyoto we spent at an all you can drink and karaoke till 6 am place and it was intense. we loooooove ben cause hes like 6foot4 but has the best giggle and would bust out some rap and sing r&b. but we all ended up belting it out and theres video footage but im not ready to share that with the world yet. i know ive got joolia doing the YMCA and me doing barbie girl. its god awful.

everything in japan looks like it was just made to be in a postcard or something. strolling thru a bamboo forest.

its been a complete cherry blossom bonanza over here. to sum up our time in japan so far with just 3 words, itd be: food, cherry blossoms

here we are at the top of monkey mountain! which is...a mountain swarming with fucking japanese monkeys! they:re actually kinda scary...

me and joolia at the golden temple which is actually covered with gooooooolllldddd.

inside the imperial palace.

i kinda dont remember where this is...outside one of the temples in kyoto anyway. but isnt it lovely?

nite time cherry blossom viewing at a castle.

we were fortunate enough to get to go behind the scenes at a once a year flower arrangement convention with joolias flower arrangement teacher. the arrangements were beautiful.

the convention was an awesome temple right beside a lake. and here we are at the main entrance.

ok and then now were in nara! were quite reluctant to even leave our hotel cause its so fucking pimp! and so last nite all we did was wash our underwear in our bathtub (yeah you read that right) and put on clay masks. were just soooooo sexy. i really cant understand why the hot japanese boys arent all over us like a fat kid on cake.

ok so from what i gather, nara is famous for being the ancient capital of japan...and for deer. there are deer all over the place! when we first saw a couple we freaked out but then we realized the place is absolutely overrun with them. they simply coexist with humans. we are like one with the deer.

ok and today we did the ultimate splurge: we rode on a human tuk tuk. ok so i have no idea what theyre actually called but ive been swooning over them and calling them human tuk tuks for days now so finally we got to ride one! it was only for 10 minutes but our human portion of the tuk tuk (i forget his name) was absolutely fantastic and made it the most magical 10 minutes of our lives. he:d make backing up noises, called us princesses and when taking a picture of us hed say `ok, 1, 2, 3, say JELLO!` i mean how can you not love that? or perhaps were just really easily amused (i think everyone that knows us well can say yes, thats exactly what it is)

and then finally today we just chilled out in a beautiful and serene japanese garden. it was wonderful.

eeeeeee! so ive run out of time now but i am crazy impressed with how fast the internet over here is! its amazing and im so glad to have posted so many pictures in such a short amount of time! well i hope youve all enjoyed cause me and joolia are having the time of our lives over here. and now its time to get our laundry and go back to our pimp ass hotel.

japan 'n' joolia time

2007-04-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

so here i am in tokyo but unfortunately i had quite the non-fun evening! since i arrived ive been in some shitty shape but today i couldnt breathe deeply without my chest hurting like a bitch so since i have gimp lungs we figured it'd be best to go to the hospital. so not a good idea! i had a swab put through my nostril and into my throat, 3 vials of blood taken (and since im harsh needle-phobic, immediately started crying. yes, im a total pussy.); basically it sucked a lot. and in the end they decided i have a slight fever and dont know why im in pain and gave me a whack of pills. and to get the depressing shit outta the way, it was absolutely miserable travelling to tokyo from phnom penh. it took like 24 hrs and 4 countries and it was just crushingly painful, both emotionally and physically. but then i got here and so that's good!

what's surprising is how much harder it is to travel around in japan than the other places ive been to so far. i hadnt been on public transport in a while and their subway system is hella intense. also most people dont speak english; apparently we were damn pampered in vietnam and cambodia. thankfully sweet sweet joolia's here! her japanese is damn good now yall should hear her! but yes its very hard to get around. most cab drivers dont know where anything is and you have to give them precise directions. but last nite we had a map and everything but the cab driver was just like no, dont know where that is, get out and get another cab. we got booted from a fucking cab! it was wiiiiiiiiiierrrrdddd. ok but no more whining cause japan is lovely.

the first day was a bit of a write off since i just arrived but our hostel was amazing and it was so clean and refreshing. we wandered around a bit in asakusa and had dinner with joolia's aunt and cousin at a posh posh sushi restaurant. apparently george bush ate there joolia's aunt informed us. anyway the food was amazing and it was very nice to eat in a family setting again, even if it isnt my family.

the 2nd day was the big day: disneylandsea! we didnt go to tokyo disney since wed both been to disneylands before so we opted for this crazy ocean/water-themed disney park they only have here and it was sooo fun! it was especially great since were both crazy zealous over disney movies and were both verrrry in touch with our inner child. we were there for 11 hours so id say we totally worked it well. it was also great to eat again with my girlfriend! since my girls from back home are all champion eaters and since apparently most other people arent, it was great to have someone around who wants to pig out just as much as me. basically at disneyland, we were either feeling nauseaus from the rides, or eating. it'd be like 'are we too nauseaus to eat? no. let's eat a churro!' by the way, i totally just downed 3 kinds of painkillers so i cant promise the rest of this post will make sense. anyway disneyland sea was soooooo fun, we were ceaselessly entertained and giddy. we just ran around all day like 5 year olds. we even bought matching little leapord print minnie mouse ears that you clip on like hair clips. by the way, joolia says she thought she was gonna die on the tower of terror and since im a wuss i totally didnt ride it and was very glad afterwards. joolia's super brave and i salute her!

oh by the way, the people here are intensely stylish. if i felt like a hobo before, i feel maaaajorly like a hobo now. oh and its fucking freezing! as in like vancouver winter cold! and since im such a smartie i pretty much have ditched all my warm clothes so i think i'll basically be wearing just one outfit every single day for the next 2 weeks. ok im going off track...yes the people here are super stylin and the boys are right up there with the chicks. boys here are so adorable and at the disneypark, theyd wear the mickymouse ear hair clips too and get all decked out in disney gear. boys back home could really learn a thing or 2 from the japanese guys.

and today we went and viewed cherry blossoms and while eating cherry blossom flavoured ice cream nonetheless! yuummmmm. then we went shibuya where they have the world's busiest pedestrian crossing. i think there are something like 4 or 5 crossings and they all go at once and its just a giant mass of people zig zagging all over the place at the same time. we also went to an all girls mall where the girls are all self-tanned orange, have big dyed and curled hair, tons of makeup and crazy get ups. after that we went to harajuku but we unfortunately didnt really see any harajuku girls but it was still a cute area with some crazy shops. lots of goth shit going on. oooh we also went to the harajuku daiso! i forgot daiso even existed.

anyway what was really fantastic today (and this is gonna sound kinda pathetic but i dont care) is that joolia's aunt took us to see a movie! shes so adorable and is all about things that are no. 1 so she took us to the premium seating theatre to watch the holiday and the seats were so great, they reclined! and we ate popcorn and it was just heaven. im not even sure if the movie was actually that good but it seemed great to me. anyway now im tired and im off to bed!

behold, the temples of angkor!

2007-04-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

so im back in phnom penh now and im leaving first thing in the morning for my loooong journey to tokyo and miss joolia! i think i'll be flying/parking my ass in various airports for over 24 hours so that should be thrilling. anyway im just getting some photos burned onto cds right now and i've had like no time to post photos/cambodian computers hate me and wont cooperate but finally it's working so now im gonna put up a half-assed post with just pictures cause im lazy.

our jungle cruise from battambang to siem reap:
s/

more of our scenic cruise: the best toilet of all time. peeing in a hole right into the river where people bathe and brush their teeth! what could be more hygenic?

all along the boat ride kids would wave like mad at us and shout hello!!!! all the cool kids are doing it.

ok so we did 3 days at the temple of angkor but fuck it, i dont remember the names of all the temples we went to sooooo here are just a whackload of pictures. this one for sure though is the famous angkor wat. and at sunrise too! were such heroes.

ok but really im sorry that this post does zero justice to the temples cause really they were absolutely amazing. no sarcasm either, really really fantastic; everyone needs to go to angkor wat! do it now! i think i took exactly 2.3 million pictures. at least a thousand anwyay. however i dont have time to post all of them due to obvious reasons but here's a few. they're not even the best ones cause im no joke half-assing this all the way today but you get the jist. just look at the pictures and then imagine the temples being 100x more impressive in real life. anyway i want to go on and on about the temples but right now im not feeling so hot (well im hot, but in a sweaty yucky way) so please google that shit or something and check it out.

me (and ed in the background)sitting up in angkor wat. we spent a few hours there i think and it was awesome. (by the way, i got my hair cut yet again here in cambodia and i just noticed it looks like i practically have no hair left in this picture. im so attractive)

more of the crazy impressive angkor wat:

ta promh: this was i think the most fun temple and also the one where tomb raider 1 was filmed. it was just like the jungle was overtaking the temple and it just looked mad and ruined but in the best way possible.

so im just gonna go ahead and estimate that it was like 60C out there at the temples cause dammit we were sweating like mad. it would be 8 am and already we'd be sweating. (it was probably more like 40C. i have no idea) anyway the heat was seriously borderline unbearable and we were basically reduced to looking like this:(by the way, those scarfs are calld...shit i dont remember. kramas? something like that and everyone wears them here in cambodia. on their heads, around their necks, as a face mask, etc etc. again, all the cool kids are doing it.)

me and ed at the elephant terrace. or something like that. and note the funky head gear!:

i also loved this temple, we went twice cause the first time we went we were hungover due to the swedes going-away party plus we rolled into the joint at like 11 am which is peak sweat time. it really was super stupid. but anyway its called bayon and has 50something towers that have four faces on each and it just looks really cool. here we are the 2nd time around at sunrise.

that day, the third day we were crazy impressive cause we did a seriously full day at angkor wat; from sunrise to sunset. we had sunrise at bayon and then up on a big ass hill near angkor wat for sunset. we also ran into pretty fernie from china beach by coincidence so he spent the day with us and it was lovely. us at...a bunch of temples (and im totally losing momentum here so really there isnt a shitload of pics like i said. im sorry but i lied):

oh and this is my favourite kiddie in all of the kingdom. we met her at one of the temples and she was just the cutest little thing ever. she'd try and pout and sound all weepy to sell us shit but then she'd just crack herself up and laugh. she'd also count from 1-10 in a variety of languages. we just hung around with a bunch of kids for a good half hour and i ended up paying her a dollar to buy her a 7-up, thats how cute this kid was.

anyway, im seriously embarassed with how shit this post is since im posting about one of the most amazing places ive been to so far but it cant be helped. the temples were amaaaaazing and you'll just have to take my word for it.

greetings from the kingdom of cambodia

2007-03-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

ive just arrived in siem reap this afternoon and ive been having a great time here in cambodia. im hot and sticky and i dont have my usb cord so im just gonna speed-type up what ive been up to. i think the last time i posted id just arrived in phnom penh and we had so much fun there. its hard to recall exactly what we did but let's see....

one of the days we went to the killing fields which is where the khmer rouge murdered thousands upon thousands of fellow cambodians and it was quite disturbing. there's still bits of clothing and human bone jutting out of the dirt in the fields and there's a large stupa housing something like 9 levels of human skulls and bones. i took a couple of pictures and felt kinda morbid doing it but well i did it anyway. then we went to s-21 which is the high school the khmer rouge turned into one of the most gruesome prisons. classrooms were turned into tiny tiny cells and torture chambers and they had tons of pictures of the prisoners who were kept there. also super sick. so that day overall was grossly disturbing but i guess its one of those things you have to do in cambodia.

we also spent one day walking around in the extreme heat which was lovely. we went to the royal palace which was beautiful but you're not allowed to be sleeveless in the palace so i had to rent a stinky t-shirt to wear over my clothes. this was unpleasant and ever so slightly hindered my palace-going experience. by the way, i totally dont recall the timeline of what ive been doing so im just tossing out things i did but in no particular order. it probably doesnt matter anyway so í shall continue!

on another day, i dragged mini out for a day of shopping. we went to the new/central market which was like a giant maze of stalls and it was super intense. you can buy just about everything in the markets over here, with piles of shoes right next to live fish, right next to dresses, watches, electronics, jewellery, food. you can even get a manicure/pedicure next to the meat section of the market. anyway, i was on a mission to get a skirt cause its fucking sweltering hot here and a skirt is perfect for that. a skirt is also perfect for squat toilets. anyway the market was fun, i got shirts for like $2 which is always good cause all my clothes that i brought over are either cut up or tossed. then we went to what was basically a mall as it was air conditioned and had like 6 floors or somethign like that. i couldnt actually find anything in the mall which was upsetting however it had a supermarket. the best supermarket in the universe! oh but before i get into that, i wanna just say i found A&W root beer over here. how immense is that!? the guys im travelling with thought it tasted like shit and cant understand the wonder that is root beer but thankfully i found a fellow vancouverite who very nearly started drooling when i told him i had a can lying in the fridge in my hotel. aaaaanyway, the supermarket is fantastic and you can buy everything from brie cheese to cheetos (that may not sound thrilling to you , but it is. trust me, it is.) i bought a clay face mask there and made my face feel actually clean for a full couple hours that nite.

but the best day in phnom penh is when we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around for a full day. we went to the russian market (im not sure why its named that, we think its cause you used to be able to buy ak-47s there) which was just another giant market but i actually found two skirts there and i was super pumped over that. we also went to the seeing hands massage which has fantastic blind masseuses (not sure of spelling and couldnt be bothered right now to find out but apparently i can type out this whole blurb of how i dont know the spelling) and i just got worked like never before. my woman was super strong and basically beat the shit out of me. muscles i didnt know could hurt hurt like a bitch but then i felt great afterwards. we also saw an elephant and a monkey eating an ice cream bar (and yes, i was jealous of the monkey) in the park. we also went to see free style khmer kickboxing! it only cost 300o riel which is like 75 cents or something and it was crazy intense. i think the only rules are something like no biting, kicking in the groin, no hitting when the other person's down. they also play this crazy khmer music that i dont know what it sounds like, maybe like snake charmer music (that sounds so wrong but perhaps that'll give you a general jist. i have it on video anyway, i'll post it soon) and the fighters kinda bounce around to the music before they kick the shit out of one another. it was fun times.

im not doing my time in phnom penh justice with this post but it'll have to do for now! so after 4 nites in PP, we were off to battambang. on our bus we were the other foreigners which was kinda cool. anyway we arrived there, got mauled by people that worked for the hotels and ended up at one hotel but eventually switched the next day. apparently the 2 hotels are total rivals complete with sabotage and beatings. anyway we wanted to go on motorbike tours in the areas surrounding battambang with the guides from the chhaya hotel cause apparently they're the best (and they sooo are) but they couldnt take us cause we were staying at their rival hotel so we ended up moving and it was so a good decision. me, mini and ed went with 3 guides and they were a total blast, it was one of the best days in a long time. they took us through the countryside, through small villages and to a bunch of sites around. we saw buddhist temples, a buddhist school, we climbed something like 350 stairs in apparently 41C heat to reach this little baby angkor wat. we also went up a mountain that had a buddhist temple that was turned into a prison by the khmer rouge and also the killing caves where people were just hurled into and left to die. very sick yet again.

but it was tons of fun, just insanely hot which i'll have to get used to anyway. i think i sweated more yesterday (sorry, i forgot to mention this moto tour thing was yesterday) than ever before in my life. i now understand the term 'sweating buckets' cause im pretty sure thats what i did. it was sick. plus we were extra gross cause we were covered with dust from the dirt 'roads' (i say 'roads' cause really, they barely were that. more like dirt paths wich potholes and tons of bumps). the sweat was the perfect adhesive for said dirt. and then we got caught in a quick rainstorm so the dirt on our bodies turned to mud. we mustve looked so hot. anyway the highlight though was the bamboo train. basically its like a bamboo platform with an engine and there's only one track so if another train is coming towards you, the train that has less stuff on it has to get off the track. unfortunately we didnt have the pleasure of running into another train but it was still a crazy ride. it goes pretty quickly and the track is crazy bumpy so it was some good times.

anyway, our guides were the shit, they were so much fun it was sad to leave them. we took them out for beers and shakes (by the way, its like a way of life to consume ridiculous amounts of fruit shakes over here) and one of our guides apparently never drank before and got kinda tanked after 2 beers. it was a fantastic day.

and then today we took a boat up here to siem reap cause apparently its the most scenic route in all of cambodia. our boat was small and crowded but its true, the scenery is lovely even though i fell asleep a couple of times. but gimme a break, it was over 7 hours long! it felt for disneyland jungle cruise (i suppose it should be the other way around really) and it was fun. we saw floating villages and the surrounding jungle is beautiful. however it's dry season here so the water's very low and we crashed into the riverbank a few times but it was all part of the fun and games. anyway, there's not much to do in battambang itself but the cutest kids in the entire universe live around there so if you're a kid-lover, head on over. they're not trying to sell you anything and are just so happy and are always smiling and waving and yelling hello. i dont like kids and i still liked them so there you have it. so now here we are in siem reap and were off to angkor wat tomorrow which is something like the largest religious site in the world. and for my angelina jolie girls back home, tomb raider was filmed there so yeee-haw.

anyway, hopefully i'll post pictures soon. but in the meantime do check out ed's blog; its under my link's section (edsanoz). he's totally dedicated and has posted roughly a kajillion pictures so that should tide you over.

the jolie connection :: from pax:vietnam to maddox:cambodia

2007-03-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

for those who understand my title, that's right, im all caught up on my celeb gossip blogs as of last nite! so i've arrived in phnom penh, cambodia tonite but for the last few days we were in the mekong delta. basically ive been in dingy boats floating around in some seriously brown, polluted and murky water but it was pretty fabulous. though the water would give us westerners some serious third world runs, the locals here bathe in it, wash their clothes and dishes in it, and cook and drink the water too.

we did tons of shit im just having a hard time remembering...ok i just asked ed and mini cause apparently ive lost my short term memory. we went to a coconut candy 'factory', a crocodile farm (which i dont particularly agree with. also they had two black bears in a tiny cage which i thought PETA should get their ass all over it), a rice noodle factory, a floating market and we visited a cham minority village. im not going into details right now mostly cause im lazy, dirty and uncomfortable after my travelling time today, i'll go into it more later! but what was really cool is that on one of the nites me, mini and ed did a homestay and we lived in a hut in the JUNGLE. it was actually kinda crazy cause first they put the 3 of us and all our bags on a single cycle (which is like a tiny cart being pulled by a motorbike). it couldnt actually make it up a small slope on a bridge so we had to get out and push the cart. and when i say we i mean i sat in the cart, mini pushed, and ed took a photo. then we got on motorbikes and went through the jungle on a small dirt path next to the river. it was actually seriously sketch and mini's motorbike actually crashed once into a ditch (if that was me, id have probably cried.) it still wasnt over and then we had a short walk through the jungle complete with walking across logs over rivers (which they call monkey bridges) while one of the guys we were living with would taunt us with threats of landmines and then grab at my legs in the pitch dark. he also called me 'princess' and told me to 'shut the fuck up and stop complaining' when i asked which hut i was living in. the vietnamese have a wierd sense of humour in the south.

but i loved our homestay and my heart exploded with joy when i saw that there was a western toilet and a shower. that may be an exaggeration, and it may not. when you're as dirty as i am nowadays, you get really pumped to find that you can shower; how sad. oh on our last day in saigon, we actually had no electricity or water in our hotel for practically the whole day! stupid saigon. but we did go to the war museum there which was definitely worth going to, lots of fascinating pictures. (i am fully aware that like many of my other posts, i have zero continuity but whatever, im sweaty and tired.) so where was i....right, our homestay. anyway it was great, we had a really good homecooked meal for dinner and it was amazing cause id never seen the sky so clearly and i could see every star in the sky. if only that could happen in vancouver. i also enjoyed the pure novelty of living in the jungle.

i woke up around 5:30 to see one of my first sunrises ever and to the sound of roosters crowing. it was also then during the first signs of daylight that i actually noticed our hut was next to a grave; awesome! no but i loved the homestay so that was fun times. and then today we had our slow boat trip into cambodia and no doubt its a fucking slow boat! we actually had to take a couple of boats but the main boat from the border took i think over three hours and the boat was pretty ghetto; with folding chairs set up for us to sit on. now my back is pretty fucked but it's all good cause were' finally in phnom penh! im also pumped cause im opting to live the lavish life and im staying in a $15 room for 2 and ive got an actual bath tub and a tv that was playing american idol when i left for dinner. im living in backpackers central so its got tons of guesthouses, internet and restaruants and bars so that should be some good times.

anyway i'll definitely miss vietnam since i was there for almost 5 weeks. oh and id forgotten but i wanted to write about how me and ed volunteered to teach english to street kids in nah trang for a couple of hours one day. but more like we realized how incompetent we really were cause we had no idea what the difference is between 'who' and 'whom' and no clue what a subject or objective pronoun is. im still not sure. so basically i felt stupid but the kids were fantastic and it was a good experience. i better brush up on my english skills before i decide to do anymore volunteering though.

oh and as for some random tidbits about vietnam just floating around my head... we wont be hearing the infamous saying "same same...but different" anymore. everything is always "same same" in vietnam. oh and in the mekong, they refer to the toilet as the "happy room". i think we should all start saying happy room. there are zero western chain restaurants in vietnam; no mcdonalds, no starbucks. and while everyone back home might think i would've died from such deprivation, i didnt and didnt even miss these things cause vietnam's got great food all on its own. only when we arrived in saigon and i saw a KFC was i reminded how there are no western chains anywhere else in vietnam. shocking for me of all people to say, but i wasnt even tempted by some good ol' fried chicken.

well i think ive rambled on long enough and i dont even remember what i wrote but i'll try and post some photos soon!

i shot a gun today!

2007-03-17T03:37:00.000-07:00

so im in ho chi minh city now (saigon) and its yucky hot and im being rushed to get my ass to the bar cause it's st. patricks day over here and the irish are getting antsy. anyway, i had the best time in nah trang it was just a great city with a good vibe. like i said before, too many mystery buckets but it was still fun. i was so fortunate to meet long thanh cause he's like the pimpest man in town and everyone knows him. i spent plenty of time sitting in his favourite coffee spot just chillin' and and meeting other photographers and stuff. also through him i got to meet crazy kim whose restaurant i ate at practically every meal. i think i ate my own body's weight in food there.
here's my and kim! and this photo was taken my long thanh, so it's extra fantastic.

our big day out in nah trang was on a 4 island boat tour. basically it was like a giant party boat and i had a lot of firsts that day. like i went snorkelling for the first time. and we had to wear these retarded get-ups:

i also got stung by my first jelly fish while snorkelling. and then my second, and then third. our boat crew was pretty insane and after lunch they gave us a little boy-band performance.

on one of the islands we got to go jet-skiing, yet another first. i went on mini's and well whaddya know, i also got tossed off a jet-ski as it flipped over for the first time too. it was a very productive day indeed. it was minorly horrific but then i was consoled with a coconut. it's great, you get a fresh coconut hacked open for only 10,000 dong here and they're not like the shitty ones we get back in vancouver.

and here's me and long thanh posing next to his most famous piece in his gallery! you really should check out his page, his work is absolutely wonderful.

in nha trang i also went to check out one of the cham towers which was quite interesting but we only made it to the one closest to the city centre cause well, we had no idea where any of the others were.

from nah trang we hopped on a bus to dalat, which i believe is touted as vietnam's honeymoon capital as well as the absolute most tacky and kitschy place in the country. it is absolutely true. there's even a mini eiffel tower. anyway, there's a place called the 'crazy house' in dalat cause i suppose the architecture is quite out there. i think it's described as quasi-alice in wonderland and its got themed rooms like the ant room or the bear room. the kangaroo room had a giant kangaroo in it that had eyes that lit up red; it was actually kinda freaky. it was just really fucked up.

on our 2nd day in dalat, we hired easy riders (basically guides on motorbikes) for half a day and went to a minority village where we got to drink some rice wine with one of the elders.

we also went to the summer palace which was so harsh 70's retro. as in rooms were painted seafoam green. the palace also had wierd shit like giant trolls and elephants scattered on the lawn,

lastly we went to one of the waterfalls where we could ride a mini roller coaster to the fall as well as back up. honestly it seemed creepy dangerous and felt like you could fly off at any given time but it was fun fun fun. you could control it with hand brakes but really, such practice wasnt encouraged.

so there you have it, tackiest place ive ever been to. soo wierd. and to cap off our time in dalat, we decided to go get massages where all the boys had some, ahem, special treatment and were offered 'happy endings'. good times all around! and now were in saigon which is pretty crazy cause there's so many people and traffic and i havent been in a big city in a whileso its kinda intense. it's also sweltering hot but what can ya do!

today we went to the cu chi tunnels and i got to shoot a GUN. i'm sure all the boys out there are wagging their tongues at this one. there were a bunch of guns you could choose from and you just buy the bullets and they just stick the gun in your hands. i shot an AK-47 and it's just crazy loud and when it goes off the gun just blasts into your shoulder, it was pretty coooooool.

we also got to see the different kinds of home-made weapons and booby-traps they used and that was pretty interesting. anyway i dont know exactly what i as expecting for the tunnels but i figured since people were living underground and using these things for weeks on end it'd be at least semi-livable. well it's not and basically we were crawling around in almost pitch-dark in a tiny tunnel for what felt like eons and it was just creepy and i couldnt wait to get out. respect for the vietnamese!

anyway its paddy's day and apparently they dont drink green beer in ireland so i have no idea what we've been getting up to back at home. i guess tonite i'll get to see how we're actually supposed to celebrate and so im off!

china beach pics

2007-03-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

we're leaving nha trang for dalat tomorrow at 7 am and its so sad cause i love nha trang the most out of anywhere in vietnam. anyway im just procrastinating cause i have to pack so im gonna put up some of our pictures from back in china beach. most of our pics from there are from our rum-fuelled nites on the beach and i never had my camera so these are ripped from mini's camera. more like ed took them off mini's camera, re-sized the pics and put them on his blog and im just stealing them off his site. (by the way, you can see mini's and ed's blogs or whatever, as well as some other people's i've met while travelling, under the links section)

a massage conga line:

me & pretty boy fernie from holland. fern's just a giant bundle of joy and i'll forever associate china beach with him.

this is the wierdo "fire camping" i was talking about before. us busting a move:

and this one is of me mid-descent in one of the marble mountain caves:

ooook and im lazy. more like im hot, sticky and ive got roughly 451,000 mosquito bites. there's an especially large concentration of them on my ankles and feet, it's really special. so i suppose its time to pack and shower but i'll write all about nha trang soon because im in love with this place.

my travel gang

2007-03-11T22:57:00.001-07:00

wheeee! i love eugene wu forever! he's helped me finally get a flight from bangkok to tokyo to see the lovely julia and i could not be more relieved! mostly cause ive been borderline ripping out my own eyeballs trying to find a flight. anyway these videos were taken on our boat trip yesterday to the islands around nha trang and basically its the people im travelling with introducing themselves to my mommy!

and here's the first take which was quite the blunder but oh well. neither are that hot anyway.

beach photos

2007-03-10T01:39:00.000-08:00

so its been a crazy time drinking too much mystery booze out of small plastic buckets here in nah trang. yesterday i think we accomplished absolutely nothing as we only rolled out of an irish pub we went to for breakfast at like 3 pm. as for today, ive had quite an interesting day so far actually. the rest of the gang went to go chill in mineral muds or something which i didnt find particularly enticing so i went to the art gallery of long thanh, the most famous photographer in nah trang, met the man and hes been toting me around on the back of his vespa and even took me to the spa. and now im in a place called 'crazy kim' where we just had some fab cocktails with crazy kim herself. he wants me to go to the salt fields tomorrow with him and a bunch of other pro photographers at 4:30 am but im doubting i'll be able to make that. oh how i disappoint myself with my laziness. anyway, his photos are amazing and you can check them out at www.longthanhart.com

anyway im finally attempting to post some pictures from china beach and jungle beach so here we go. but the internet's damn slow so we'll see what i get accomplished. also most of the pictures of china beach are drunken beach pictures and those are all on mini's camera which is currently broken so hopefully i can post those soon-ish.

the dudes hanging out in front of hao's place:

me & ed looking seriously indiana jones in the caves of marble mountain at china beach. i dont recall if i ever even mentioned marble mountain but it's basically a mountain that's got marble; whaddya know! its filled with cool pagodas and caves so we went a-explorin':

me & mini sitting with one of the buddhas in marble mountain and then me and ed risking our lives climbing around inside one of the caves:

me looking slightly dishevelled on the top of marble mountain. and in the background you can see where we were living, right on the beach:

the crew posing with good ol' mr. hoa. he was just great times, sneaking smokes behind his wife's back and tossing out lines like "fucking vietnamese!" "fucking eh!"

and here's our cute lil' hut at jungle beach! ed in a hammock just adds to the ambience

quite a difference in attire for me compared to in china. i prefer the bikini. and that's ibbie-pie (ib) chillin' in the hammock.

jungle beach! possibly the bluest and clearest water ive ever seen.

and on our last day in jungle beach i think i mentioned we climbing around on the treacherous rocks of doom and here's a picture of sarah bravely smiling while trying desperately not to fall to her death. we were such champions that day (by the way, to all the haters out there , those jagged rocks totally scratched up my fake chanel sunglasses so now i traded them in for new ones, so dont rag on my style no more!):

anyway im still eating my face off here in vietnam, cutting up more of my clothes cause its getting pretty damn hot and that's about it. im ripping my hair out trying to find a flight to see lovely julia in japan and the photos are taking eons and i simply cant be bothered so i'll post more another time!

from one beach to the next

2007-03-08T04:56:00.000-08:00

so we've just arrived in nha trang and last nite we were at a place called jungle beach. unfortunately i still cant post any photos cause apparently the computers they have going at this internet place im at are ancient and incapable of being in anyway useful. hopefully tomorrow i'll find a place that doesn't suck ass. anyway, i wanna just say that i had multiple near death experiences on the overnite bus going to jungle beach. it was my first long bus journey in vietnam and while it wasnt as awful as i anticipated, it was still...interesting.

first off we spent 1/2 hr looping around hoi an picking up people and then ending up exactly where we first got onto the bus. it was incredibly productive. but the bus ride itself was rather frightening; me and ed found it better to simply shut our eyes and pretend we weren't always on the cusp of a firey death. bus drivers here apparently like to pass other cars by driving in the lane with opposing traffic heading straight for you and only violently swerve back into the right hand lane at the very last moment. its riveting i tell you. and apparently all the bridges in vietnam are complete shit so when were on a bridge, the bus driver simpley swerves from side to side avoiding potholes and the like but it appears as though you are always just about to drive right off the side of the bridge when all of a sudden you jerkily swerve to the other side of the bridge, like a zig zag. also quite exciting.

anyway, we arrived at a secluded little 'resort' called jungle beach around 5 am and though it was lovely its too expensive for my (current) blood. as in it's $18/nite and yes for me that is now expensive. but it was fun, the owner's from a small town in BC, and the five of us got to live in a little bamboo and palm leaf hut. now i can say that live lived in an actual hut before, what an accomplishment! there were palm trees and hammocks strewn about and a bunch of dogs and cats roaming around. our hut was very cute and we had mattresses set up on stilts and mosquito nets so we couldnt get eaten alive by bugs or whatever. the beach is totally beautiful with white sand and clear blue, blue water. ive been doing a lot of being lazy lately. as in i think on the first day we were all a bit comatose after spending the nite not sleeping on a bus and so it was just lazing around, eating. i also spent a good chunk of time peeling skin off of poor sunburnt irish ed with my tweezers. it was actually kinda sick but that was as productive as i got that day so i figured it was worth noting. it was a little wierd though cause the place was absolutely run amock with couples and everyone was asleep by like 10pm so it was a bit boring at night.

today i went with the boys and sarah, a lovely german girl, to try and visit a waterfall via a trail. but it was more like there was a quasi-trail and then for the majority of the trek you have to climb around like a fucking monkey on giant treacherous rocks and boulders of death. that may sound overly-dramatic, but thats exactly how it went down. me and sarah also did all this monkey-climbing in our bikinis and bare foot because apparently i brought running shoes just for show. anyway i was quite amazed at how limber i am and the amazing gripping ability i have in my fingers and toes, i deserve a medal or something. but instead of a medal, i ate a lot.

anyway so now were in nha trang which apparently is quite a party city which is exactly what i want after spending so many days in the middle of nowhere on a beach. im just too city for my own good. anyway i'll wait till i can get some pictures going on here before i post more (also im a tad lethargic cause i just ate a lotta pasta) so be patient, it's all coming soon.

lazin' around china beach

2007-03-04T20:44:00.000-08:00

so we had an agonizingly long train ride into danang and we're currently staying in between danang and hoi an at a place called china beach which basically has nothing but 15,000 dong bottles of rum (which is just under a dollar i believe) and a lovely beach. i now know i indeed can get sunburnt.

we're staying at a guesthouse called hao's place and mr. hao is some crazy shit, he tosses out swear words better than me. the place is interesting, its got lizards all over the walls and everyone's just hella lazing around. and for your information, the laziness is extremely infectious and i barely know what im typing about right now cause its just after noon, hot and im only 1/4 functioning. im currently sitting in an internet cafe in hoi an waiting for a dress to be made. hoi an is just full of tailor shops and you can get all sorts of clothes and shoes made here its fantastic. however y'all should be impressed cause they've got some pimp coats here that you can get made for only like $30 but im resisting! instead im getting a dress for $7,not bad eh? i figure its more practical that a wool coat.

by the way, in case you havent noticed there is absolutely zero continuity, rhyme or reason in this post, im just straight up mindlessly rambling. and so i'll continue. all my clothes are dirty, im always dirty and there's practically a beach in my bed. i think im seriously turning into a straight up hobo! but anyway, all there is to do in china beach is lie on the beach, and drink. people are always down at the beach at nite drinking beer and cheap rum. on one of the nites a bunch of local girls who looked quite young and wasted came around and told us theyre 89-100 years old and had just flown in from the moon. no joke, it was wierd.

yesterday a bunch of us came into hoi an to do some shopping and eating which was good. we had a good motorbike/scooter gang going on with me and linn hanging off the backs of the bikes; im sure we looked smokin' hot. johnny couldnt make it cause he had a whole bottle of rum to himself the nite before but he's still alive and kickin'. (and im aware i may seem slightly disoriented via this text but i assure you i havent had a single drink,its only noon! i think it's just china beach syndrome.)

and last nite just down the beach from us there was the wierdest party of all time. it was a bunch of japanese tourists, who arrived on something called the 'peace boat' which just cruises around the world, and a whole slew of locals and they told me they were "fire camping". basically it looked like sorta psychotic cult prancing around a giant bonfire on the beach in a giant circle. someone gave me their torch and i pranced around that fire too. there's always someone in the middle of the giant circle dancing and then basically everyone else copies them so its like synchronized dancing. good ol' irish ed decided to have a go and got right there in the middle of that circle and had everyone mimicking his crazy dance moves. it was pretty much the wierdest thing you couldever see. i'll have to post pictures later cause i am just doing a shit job describing absolutely anything and everything right now.

oh! i wanted to note, the area where we're living is really wierd in that all along the road are stores that sell massive stone sculptures of like lions and buddhas and mermaids and shit. it's actually seriously creepy. but alright i wont torture you all any longer cause i can barely comprehend what i just typed and im attempting to edit this shit but i cant even so i apologize. dont give up on me just yet! im getting outta here tomorrow by nite bus and its just gonna suck so bad that i already told everyone im going to be crying half the time. and john's leavin' me high and dry for laos tomorrow so i wont be able to inform you all of what he's up to for a while, not sure when. and so for now im with my swedes and 2 irish boys and im gonna have to extend my visa cause my 2 week stay in vietnam is now somehow stretching past the one month mark.

leaving our hanoi home

2007-02-28T21:45:00.001-08:00

so tonite were getting our asses onto a 20 hr train down south to danang which might suck, just a little! at least we have hard sleepers this time. oh the things to get excited about nowadays. anyway on my last day in sapa, me and hui, this thai guy i met on my other trek, got up super early since theres nothing to do but go to bed early and get up early and went roaming to other villages all on our own. we walked to cat cat which is the village that's closest to sapa. its the most popular but unfortunately that means we were surrouneded by a mass of korean tourists who arrived via tour bus.

thankfully, by suggestion of one of the locals, we decided to saunter further away from sapa to the village of sin chai. this village was absolutely fabulous, absolutely zero tourists and we got to see how the people actually live. i think this village isnt particularly popular because most of the villagers arent decked out in traditional clothing but more like just....dirty clothing. the place was absolutely run amok with dusty ,snotty faced children who managed to somehow slightly tug at my completely un-maternal heart strings. we went into the schoolyard and i got a couple pictures of kids in class. more like half the kids were in class and the other half were outside playing with marbles or kicking the shit out of one another. oh children, how endearing. but overall i loved sin chai the most and we hitched a motorbike ride back which was quite interesting because for a portion of it we were winding up and down a pathway through the village (kinda felt like a dangerous mini roller coaster ride if you ask me) and then for most of it we were encompassed in a crazy fog.

by the way, the weather in sapa is intense. apparently a local saying is that sapa has all four seasons in one day and i quite agree. one moment its hot and sunny the next its fog you can barely see through, and then next its like a fucking monsoon complete with flooding in the streets.

so we arrived back in hanoi early yesterday morning and could only manage to get train tickets for tonite so weve just been chilling a whole bunch. well more like ive been eating non-stop, its very special. im on an intense carb-dairy-fat diet, its doing wonders for my physique. anyway me and linn got up early today, went shopping and now im back in the hostel and contemplating taking a nap...

strollin' through sapa solo

2007-02-26T02:25:00.000-08:00

so john and the swedes are out climbing fansipan mountain (the tallest mountain in vietnam) for 3 days and all i can say is, im glad im not. a super dense mist and light rain has descended upon sapa and ive got a couple hours to kill before meeting someone for dinner so i thought id post something. well im having a fantastic time in sapa and being by myself, ive met tons of people (so no worries mom, i havent even had to eat a single meal alone) and just in general im having a blast!

well the overnite hard seat train was a total nitemare. attempting to sleep on a wooden bench is just as horrendous as one would think. actually it was worse and the only time i got a little bit of sleep was when linn slept on the floor and i could curl up semi-fetal position on the bench. anyway we arrived saturday morning and im at a nice hotel my adopted german dad from the hanoi hostel recommended and for $4/nite i get a tremendously great view of the mountains. (although i will say, i cannot actually recall the last time i had a hot shower. fuck.)

anyway, the first day everyone else rested up for their big mountain trek and in general, i dont need sleep so i just explored around sapa, took a nice little walk with a new zealander and just generally chilled out.

oh and i met this old man who gave us plum wine that he'd made himself and he really took joy in kicking everyone's ass at a wooden version of connect-four and chess:

and then yesterday, i went to the sunday market in bac ha (3 hours outside of sapa) which is where the flower h'mong come decked out to buy food, clothing, whatever. they had the most beautiful clothing that's just insanely colourful and of course, embroidered with lots of flowers. the women are just so beautiful that i went a little more camera happy than usual...

back in hanoi we met cedric, a swiss guy who's so madly in love with sapa he's been here a month, went to hanoi, detested it and immediately booked a train ticket back to sapa for the next nite. he showed me pictures of his best friend up here, vu, and ive just been running into her all over the place. shes black h'mong and they all wear beautiful clothing that the women dye using indigo.
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this little flower h'mong girl was pretty feisty and running around like mad in her village in bac ha. i think she absolutely loves attention and so decided to climb into a tree and vogue for all the tourists. ok she didnt vogue, but she was lookin' good.

at nite, there's not much to do here cause the town literally shuts down at like...11 pm. as in everything's closed, the street lights turn off and the streets are deserted. i was out at one of the bars with a couple of guys i met up here and though the sign said "open until late" we got booted out by 12, and i was locked out of my hotel. so basically, ive been catching up on my sleep here.

today i went on a trek to 3 villages- vunh ho, lao ch'ai and ta' van. it was a lot of fun i had a guide who, though he could speak english, insisted on trying out my french skills since im canadian. i was also with a cute vietnamese married couple and a guy from thailand and we just ripped it up on our trek! ok we didnt really but we had lot of fun. we encountered quite a few black h'mong girls on the way, some wanting to sell us jewellery and some following us just for kicks. (by the way, some of these girls are the most ingenious salespeople on the planet. they know how to work it like no one else i swear. my first day i asked a girl if i could take her picture and she shoots back, "you buy from me, then you take a picture". or last nite i was walking around with this canadian guy and one girl was like "you buy from me for your girlfriend and your girlfriend kiss you long time!")

but this 12 yr old girl, mau, was adorable, didnt try to sell me anything and was with us for most of the day:

all day we were walking amongst magnificent rice fields. all the rice had just been harvested but it was still quite a sight. i felt very national geographic today. anyway im losing momentum so im just gonna post a whack of pictures now:

oh and i thought the clothing of the dzay people was very interesting because it resembles chinese clothing (since the proximity to china), but NEON. this lovely woman had a baby strapped to her back and invited us in for tea.

speaking of clothing, i just want to note that i have fully reinvigorated my wardrobe here in sapa, as you may have noticed in my pictures. nowadays i walk around wearing a netted bandana, a $1 t shirt with a map of sapa on it (that in fact, the locals also wear underneath their traditional garb, oh ho!), shawls, and drawstring linen pants. im so much hotter than i ever imagined i could be.

massive photo post: vietnam

2007-02-22T04:49:00.000-08:00

ok so hip hip hooray, i got my camera screen fixed today! omg, that rhymed, im so bad ass. it was half the price i expected it to be and only took a couple of hours and now im at an internet cafe (at hanoi spirit house, pooge!) and i can finally take some time to upload some pictures!

this is from guangzhou but i just like it, the evolution of the chinese woman:

me and john mimicking a war statue/monument, cause were so very cool:

we're fucking millionaires (i love vietnamese money, you feel so rich tossing around 20,000 dong bills):

me posing eastern european calendar girl-style in front of a tank at the war museum:

daniel (aussie), john and ib playing around with their big canons at the museum:

mini, me and alexia (my fabulous hair stylist) scootin' around town:

we attempted to go out on a tourist outing during tet and everything was closed so we posed outside a closed door on the little island in the middle of the lake in the old quarter:

ed (irish who was my dedicated lap dancing pupil), john, filipp (german) and mini during our new years eve roof top party. words cannot fully describe what is taking place in this picture. its just...something else.:

this photo is slightly disturbing (not as much so as the one directly above, john disagrees) but thats us trying our very best to start off a tacky bikini party for new years. and to my ladies back home, how much are you lovin my blue eyeshadow?:

chilling with smoe locals as they strummed their guitars and sang beatles songs on the steps of the old st. joseph's cathedral near our hostel at like 4 am:

along the wooden walkway on the side of cat ba island to the boys' secluded hut hang out on the beach:

the 'huts'. john and mini got to share a little tent, john says it was a warm and fuzzy experience. warm and fuzzy from vodka. as in john broke a beer fridge that nite but adamantly denied it was him that broke it and instead tried to distract the beach police by claiming his bag had been stolen.:

me and my swedish sister linn on the roof of our boat:

so this is an example of the islands in ha long bay that we were trying so hard to describe in literary terms last nite. this one the captain told me is called 'turtle' island cause well, it looks like a turtle:

cruisin' ha long bay:

the good ship suckysucky boomboom! (i forget if i wrote it before but we got our 2 day, 1 nite boat, our 4 person crew, and all our wonderful meals for only $22US/person, fantastic:

inside the caves:

the workplace of our master chef aboard the boat. all that yummy food, without the aid of fresh water or electricity! amazing. and perplexing...:

the inside of our super posh cabin:

me with our boat crew!:

this is the murderous fatty monkey that john has decided to name "sumo sammy the banana nazi":

us clinging onto jagged rocks for dear life atop monkey mountain:

ok well ive had quite enough of this so now its time for some ice cream! and tomorrow nite we get on an overnite train to sapa but what kinda blows is that we just got our tickets today and all that's left are hard seat tickets so we'll be spending 10 hours sharing hard benches with the locals...

ha long bay: magical islands and no electricity

2007-02-21T04:08:00.000-08:00

so i'm in cat ba, ha long bay right now with johnny, linn, ib and mini (ireland). i apologize if this post isnt completely coherent cause im a little lethargic right now after eating an apple pancake and pringles for dinner....the first day we got here we rented what apparently are 'huts' which were more like little platforms raised on stilts with a straw roof over it and then you set up tents in them. however, me and linn soon pussied out and got a hotel room for the 2 of us since it was only $5us for the room. but anyway the huts were really cute, right on cat co 2 which is just a little beach that you get to by walking this long sketchy wooden....walkway i suppose it was suspended halfway up the cliffs of the island with rusty bars keeping you from falling off the side. anyway, the first day here was chill and me and linn got a mini girls nite in our little hotel room.

the next day we went on our own private boat which i believe john christened "suckysucky boomboom". the boat was a little sketch aka had a squat toilet that you flushed using sea water you drag up yourself with a bucket on a string and as it turned out, zero electricity, but i have no complaints cause i went out to go check it out and i ok'd it. in all honesty, me and ib went all over town trying to pick a tour since most people book their tours back in hanoi but since were ghetto fabulous, we just have to do things the absolute cheapest way, and basically i fell in love with the woman who was touting this particular tour. she was just so cute and seemingly trustworthy! anyway, i actually i quite loved our boat, it so adorable! (oh and i still cant post pictures im afraid. first off my camera screens still fucked so i dont even know if any of the pictures i took turned out, plus i dont have my USB cable which is back in hanoi. hopefully soon though, bear with me. hey but in the meantime, i have more time for actual written content so really, y'all should still be pleased cause it means i have to be all creative and using my brain and shit. ok, ive sidetracked enough...) AAAAANNNYYYYWAAAAYYYY...

the boat's adorable, just this wooden boat with a squat, an indoor cabin and a roof with tiny railings around it that you can sit on. our crew was fantastic as well, a 4 person family and the mother cooked the best food for us. all on a tiny little griddle or something in the back of the boat. so basically we cruised all around ha long bay which is just tons and tons of crazy looking tall mountainy islands all over the place. our captain told me theres 1,700 of these islands. some are massive, some just like rocks, but they all just protrude out of the water and i cant even describe it but it looks incredible (im ashamed cause i thought i was fantastic with imagery but i have failed myself and all of you). john says "ha long means rising dragon or sinking dragon or farting dragon... i forget. But all the mini islands look like giant rocky chicken mcnuggets" (ok he actually typed that. thats his first contribution to my blog, and thats all he has to say. he tells me to just put up pictures later.) anyway, its truly beautiful, go fucking google that shit if you cant wait!

so on the first day we just cruised around, anchored at a small little beach where the boys tried their hand at fishing with long sticks and john actually caught a little one. the beaches are fantastic, beige sand and little pieces of coral and shells piled up all along the shore. also there were a few mini caves we could crawl into. we also got to go into this really great big ass cave where we wandered around with a couple of candles. such caves were used as hospitals during the war. the stalagmites in the cave looked like "stony icicles of death" (john) and "crystal-y" (mini).

then as the sun was setting i think at like 6 pm, we realized, well fuck, we have no electricity! perhaps my heart skipped a beat, its hard to recall. but i did slip into a momentary phase of panic cause fuck, im an city girl! no electricity, who does that?! (ok, a lot of people, thats who.) so i got over it, we had some candles lit up and that was that. mini has little speakers so we plugged our ipods in and hung out on the roof with the 2 young guys in our crew. for sleep, we had a tarp draped over us and futons set all on top of the roof, how cozy. it was probably my earliest nite sleeping ever since how late can you really stay up in the dark with just a single candle. however, disaster strikes! super intense rainstorm at like 5 am, got all our shit wet and we had to run in from the roof in the dark and i end up curled up in a ball sleeping on 2 benches shoved together. luckily, all our electronic shit is still intact however my pants and hoodie are still wet so just now i had to buy $4 mens shorts which im currently rocking out in.

but we didnt let the rain get us down and today we got in our little wicker row boat and went through some underwater caves into a little lagoon with the good ol' captain. we also went to monkey island, home to 40 monkeys, where we got to meet and feed bananas to 3 monkeys and one of them, the big super fat rabid monkey, had a failed murder attempt on mini. when asked in an interview, mini says the monkey scared the shit out of him. i still thought they were kinda cute, despite big signs that say the monkeys might bite you. we climbed up these sharp jagged rocks up the mountain to check out the view and coming back down, i felt quite confident that i would fall to a rather dramatic death. however, i did not as you can tell by my uber long-winded post that ive got going on here right now.

i just want to note, that i had never been dirtier in my life, than on this boat. we had no fresh water other than a couple of bottles of water, no shower obviously, and we were just sticky with sea water and sea air. so now were back on cat ba island, freshly showered and i think we have a date with the 2 boys from our boat crew cause they wanna take us to the disco after seeing our mad dance moves up on the roof last nite. i mean, my mad dance moves.

hamburger holiday in hanoi

2007-02-18T00:48:00.000-08:00

so i havent really had time to post anything new in almost a week but i dont even have a good excuse cause weve done absolutely shit all in hanoi. however, while doing nothing ive still managed to never have a free moment or get more than 4 hours of sleep per nite. of course i've been spending max time with my sister from a different (swedish) mother, linn (whom along with her boy ib we picked up on the side of the road as id mentioned earlier).

i've also met plenty of people at our hostel, mostly facilitated by the fact that so far pretty much my entire hanoi experience is comprised of chilling in either the hostel lobby or up on the rooftop bar. so ive got my swedish counterpart and ive got alexia from melbourne who gave me a fabulous haircut up on the roof just the day after we met. we had to search the city for a pair of scissors to cut my hair with and finally ended up getting a pair from a hardware store. a little dodgy? nahhhhh. the next day linn cut one of my t-shirts into a tank top so you just know im super stylin' nowadays. oh and on top of the new 'do and clothes, i lost my sunglasses in nanning (fucking nanning, i hate that hell hole) and just replaced them with ridiculously hot faux chanel ones complete with big tacky gold plastic interlocking Cs on the sides. and i suppose my irish chauffeur 'mini' would like a shout out since i get toted around on the back of his scooter. oh yes, ive been on the backs of plenty of scooters and motorcycles by now and though at first it seems a little freaky since traffic is pretty insane, you figure well if 4 year old kids can stand on the back of one just holding onto their daddy's shoulders or chicks in skirts can ride side-saddle on them, i better be able to do that shit too.

its rather sad to admit we've done hardly anything but we try! it's just that almost everything is fucking closed for tet (happy chinese new year by the way.) however we have done a few touristy type things. we went to the military museum where me and linn got to pose calendar girl style with tanks and fighter planes (those pictures will be up as soon as i can figure out how...) a whole slew of us from the hostel also went to see the water puppet show one nite which isnt as horrendous as one might expect. i rather enjoyed it, along with the giant mass of white seniors who arrived and left on tour buses that filled the rest of the audience. alright i honestly dont even remember what the hell we've been doing...in all seriousness, id say ive just been drinking and going out. happy hour at our hostel kicks off at 5 pm and away we go. one nite i 'accidentally' stepped on a glass table and broke it with my bare foot, resulting in generous amounts of bloodshed. a nice german boy has been playing doctor to me so its nice and bandaged.

on chinese new years eve we had a big bbq and me and linn decided to get decked out in our bikinis and put on sick amounts of bright blue eye shadow (the end result: cheap hooker chic) in an attempt to get a beach party going. (to my ladies back at home in canada, you'd all love linn too. seriously, sister from a different mother!)no other girls wanted to participate. there was a big fireworks display on at the lake and we sat so close i got some burning fireworks remnants in my eye. we couldnt get into a club that nite (well in all fairness, i was wearing linn's red track pants rolled up, flip flops, and still rockin' the eye shadow) but we did end up on the steps of a church chilling with some vietnamese who were singing and playing beatles songs on their guitars. i also got my first taste of vietnamese moonshine from a giant plastic jug.

anyway im a little choked today cause i broke my camera screen so i gotta figure out how i can get that shit fixed. and today im just tired and a little bored but we're finally leaving hanoi tomorrow for ha long bay (we couldnt leave because apparently tet = no buses or trains). oh and as for the title of this post, its cause we get to eat some yummy burgers at our hostel bbqs. however, there are no mcdonalds here which is quite a tragedy for me...

VIETNAM

2007-02-13T03:47:00.001-08:00

ok so this post might not make total sense cause im just rapid-fire typing away but that's cause we've finally arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam and i'm about to go roam around the old quarter for a bit! i apologize for the lack of pictures in this post but hopefully my expert usage of the english knowledge will evoke such powerful imagery that you will not even notice the lack of actual photos.

so from hong kong we went into guangzhou and we proceeded to go directly from the metro to this island called shamian and it was so fabulous because our "hostel" was super pimp and more like a hotel and what was super fab was it had a tv with english tv channels including MTV. that means i got to see music videos again and i was seriously overcome with joy. i had an intense mtv/animal documentaries/countdown of movie songs marathon that nite. we also had dinner at a super cute outdoor restaurant that was strung up with lights in the trees and everything.

we only left our little island when we left the city but what was most noteworthy about shamian is that it's where all the white americans go to adopt chinese babies so everywhere you go you just see whities toting around their new babies. it made for quite an interesting sight. god i loved our little island, cut off from the real guangzhou.

from guangzhou, we took a 14 hour train into nanning. i hate nanning. this is the city that's famous for eating DOGS. john made a fuss over how he thinks people that bitch and moan about their travels on their blogs are retarded but i dont care, i hate nanning. we arrived maybe 6 am and the city itself is quite boring and just very urban and crowded. but the real thing that put me off was our 'hotel'. i use that word loosely cause it was seriously the sickest and dodgiest place we've stayed at so far. it was right next to the train station and the bathroom was like 1 metre x 0.5 metre and it had a shower OVER the squat toilet. note 2 things about that sentence: shower OVER the toilet, + SQUAT toilet. you had to stand straddling the toilet during your shower.

i wanted to cry just a little. actually a lot.

also, this 'hotel' had hourly rates, so you know what that means! even standing NEAR my bed, i felt like id catch at least 3 different types of STDs. also hookers kept calling our room. this was the first nite where i was like, "yup, im sure glad i brought along that sleeping sheet!" i didn't even sleep with my little moo cow because i didnt want to subject him to that kinda environment.

anyway today we got up nice and early, left our hellish hotel and hopped a train into a town right near the vietnam border. we got a ride in a little tarp-covered metal cart attached to a motorcycle to the border and from there we got in a car, then picked up a cute swedish couple on the side of the road (i instantly developed a craving for ikea meatballs and told them so)and hitched a ride in a van into hanoi. and now the four of us are staying at a fabulous aussie-run hostel in the old quarter and i had the best shower of my entire life. well more like compared to nanning, it was the best shower in the universe. right now im staying with the swedish girl in the all girl dorm called the 'nunnery' but tomorrow nite i'll get put into the mixed dorm which i actually prefer. but anyway, im very impressed with my speed typing cause ive managed to type all this in an incredibly short time span! well im off, until i have tales from vietnam to tell.

leavin' our HK home...

2007-02-09T00:45:00.000-08:00

so we've been in hong kong since january 25th and we're finally packing our shit up and leaving tomorrow. we're busing into guangzhou and the next day we're taking a train into nanning. and from there we finally head outta china and into our next stop, vietnam! we've been in hong kong forever but according to my family, it's still not quite long enough. well i'm pretty sure we've seen everything that hk has to offer and we've been on every single MTR (metro) line except the one to the airport so you know, that ain't bad.

ok side note here, i wanna give a big shout out to everyone who's been leaving me comments on this here blog, i get super pumped when i see i've gotten one! (oh the things one gets excited over when they're away from home...) and so....don't just take, give back! as in...if you're reading this and not leaving me super awesome comments, then you should seriously at least THINK long and hard about posting something. i mean, i pour my blood, sweat and tears into this blog. but no pressure! (ok no, there's a lot of pressure. do it.)

aaaanyway, right after my last post we went out for dinner with the cousins that i grew up with in vancouver and then we went BOWLING. i love bowling and who'd have thought id be bowling on my trip to asia. i'm gonna seriously miss my family over here!

then yesterday we went over to lamma island where i got to see my very first wind turbine (i was seriously interested) and then i lay on the beach and fell asleep. i'm looking forward to many more beach days. and then today's our last full day in HK and it's kinda stressful (but knowing me i get stressed over nothing so that's not saying much) cause we have to pack, clean and whatever. i just spent an hour at the fucking post office trying to mail shit out and then was so flustered that i went out and bought a box of ice cream drumsticks and proceeded to come home, eat and drip chocolate over my one clean shirt that's not still wet from the laundry. (doing laundry sucks in china. we've been attempting to dry our jeans for who knows how many hours now and i had to go out to eat lunch in wet shorts. sick.)

so i still gotta pack and figure out how to burn my kajillion pictures that i've taken so far onto disks to send home but unfortch, everything on this computer is in chinese which i cannot read so i will probably either a) punch a hole through the screen after trying for 30 min or b) give up after 2 minutes and eat candy. ok... i just attempted the task and honestly, i dont even wanna try anymore and it's only been like 30 seconds and it's already given me a slight headache. fuck. oh and by the way, because little piggy the doggie poops in the kitchen, the apartment smells like a giant steaming pile of dog poop right now. yum! i'm gonna go eat a chinese raisin bun...

ok so now im just harsh procrastinating and i'm gonna upload and post a couple of the videos that we took in hong kong. they're entertaining for us at least...(oh and again, damn you youtube for drastically decreasing the quality and sound of our superb videos)

us at cheung chau (?) island, my first beach in asia.

in the middle of an intersection (seriously, we really know how to capture those special moments on video)

celebrating macho john's birthday at disneyland: the disney parade

alright well somehow it's already after 6 pm here...and the only thing we haven't done in hong kong is watch the laser show they've got shooting out of the buildings at nite, so off we go now!

my REAL motherland: hong kong & macau

2007-02-07T02:05:00.000-08:00

argh, i just accidentally deleted my entire post right when i was almost done! so now i have to start all over again but i'll do it anyway. it's just gonna be a little bit half-assed now. i'm just minorly devestated. i might shed a tear or two.

well before i start i have to put up this picture cause i find it hilarious. it's of a bus stop near my big cousin's house. i mean, why have a bench when you can just line up a slew of different chairs?

oh and i wanna let y'all know that my cantonese is getting killer good! ok i exaggerate. but i'm more fluent than ive ever been in my entire life and i'm really impressed with myself! i'm all in touch with my linguistic roots and shit. if i stayed longer i might turn even more honger. i'm already saying stuff like "ok-la!" anyway...

so last week my cousin pat took a day off work cause him and john wanted to go hiking. as many of you know, hiking + diana = incompatible, disasterous, ridiculous, etc. so we went hiking over a bunch of mountains on lantau island. OVER mountains.
that would involve moving uphill and well, my lungs and legs really only enjoy horizontal mobility. i kinda thought i was going to die. however it was alright in the end cause we ended up in a cool fishing village called tai o that had stilt houses.

also on lantau island is a giant bronze buddha. i think they promote it as the world's largest outdoor, seated, bronze buddha, to be precise:

me high-fiving good ol' buddha:

a short walk from the buddha is the "path of wisdom". john and pat looking super wise.

on the weekend, one of my uncles took us to the fisherman's wharf and i gotta say, they got some crazy looking seafood over here. it's nothing like steveston (the fisherman's wharf in richmond) that we've got going on back home.

MACAU:

we just got back from macau last nite and i loved macau! it was crazy cause we saw my big gangster-looking uncle for lunch the day before we left and when he found out we didn't have a place to stay at yet, he decided "you're staying at my sister-in-law's". then it was, "i'll take you there". then "i'll come with you for one day". and finally it was "i'm coming for both days and bringing along your cousin whom youve never met". and so it was, we ended up staying at a pimp 2-floor penthouse on the island of taipa. no complaints from me! i think my uncle really enjoyed playing tour guide and i got to see everything.

even though macau's only 1 hour away by turbojet ferry, it's very different from hong kong. it's turning all las vegas with its giant casinos (they have a wynn and a venetian is being constructed. god i wanna go to vegas again!)but what i really liked was the portugese architecture:

i also really liked the portugese food! macau was an on-going food-fest. my uncle took us to a bunch of restaurants that my grandpa used to take him, my mom and the other kids to. this is the super yummy portugese baked chicken from one of my grandpa's favourite restaurants.

this is one of the homes my mommy used to live in! my uncle was doing some serious strolling down memory lane with our trip to macau. a whole lotta "and i used to hold your mom's hand and walk around this park when she was 3! only 3! she was tiny!"

me eating my very first portugese egg tart. i think my mom dreams about these:

this is the catholic church my mom used to go to. i'm zero religious but i still found this church beautiful. the security guard there fancied me so i got a mini tour and got to take as many pictures as i want. yeeeeeee haw.

the famous "facade" of a church called the ruins of st. paul. all that's left of the church after it burned down is the front of it.

we went to hac sa (black sand) beach and well whaddya know, it's got black sand! (this is where my uncle would say "and this is where your grandpa used to go swimming!", "this is where we camped as kids!") i actually thought it was really cool. i mean, fuck, the sand is black!

we also went up the macau tower which i think is 60-something floors and you get a nice 360 view of everything.

this is a-ma temple where we got to witness/almost go deaf from a massive string of fireworks being lit up. apparently it's supposed to bring prosperity so perhaps i should go get me some fireworks. of course, it's not like im working...anyway, i really liked these insence coils that they had everywhere.

and so macau was a total whirlwind and it was fabulous. and today i went to chill at my big cousin's jade shop for a few hours. he gave me a pretty purple "doughnut" jade so i'm a happy little girl. oh and my little nephew just called so now i'm off to eat more with my cousins!

family bonanza!

2007-02-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

alright, so if anyone ever wondered where i get my ravishing good looks from, this is the place to find out. i've been busy seeing/meeting family in hong kong and i've really been enjoying it. and since seeing family, at least for the chinese, apparently means eating your face off, my path towards fatness is proceeding nicely.

basically this post isn't about anything but really is simply for the viewing pleasure of my family back at home in vancouver. as in i know my mom is absolutely dying to see these pictures so i'm just putting them all up asap in one neat little package. so if you're not interested in seeing me with my extensive family, then wait for the next post but if you are then please continue!

these are for my grandma! my uncle (dad's side) and his family. my cousin lilian is so cute!

and this is my cousin pat whom we're living with! me and pat in tai o, a fishing village on lantau island.

pat and big buddha (more on buddha in my next post. this one's strictly family!)

and today was a total eating marathon where we had dim sum with my big uncle (my mom's oldest brother) and his family. i think my uncle looks like a big mob boss. seriously.

and then at nite we had dinner with the the rest of my mom's side of the family including uncles and cousins that i grew up with when i was a kid.

this is my big cousin and his family. i was super pumped to see him and his wife again cause they moved back from canada over 10 years ago and i haven't seen them since. it was my first time meeting my nephew who's already 9 years old.

oh and also we flew kites today on a dam. me and my big cousin!

and finally, the money shot: pretty much all of my mom's family all at one table.

living the life in hong kong

2007-02-01T03:13:00.000-08:00

so we've been living in hong kong for a week now and at this time we're really not backpacking at all since we're living in a nice apartment but it's not like i'm complaining. i can't really recall what we did on what day but here are some of the highlights...

we took this really steep tram up to 'the peak' which is i suppose one of the highest points in hong kong and you can get a really good view of the city from up there. we're special and sat up there for a good 3 hours or so because john wanted to see the view both during the day and at night.

i've also had the chance to finally meet one of my cousins, lilian, that i've never met before. perhaps chinese families are just monsterously big, cause i haven't met a bunch of my family...can you see the family resemblence? (this picture's pretty much just for my family to see. hi mom, show this to grandma!)

we've gone to a lot of street markets, like the nite market and the ladies' market, which are a lot of fun. really, all the markets are kinda the same. in that they all sell cheap, useless and therefore highly enticing junk. there are also a lot of shopping districts and one street just sells aquarium fish. and well, i found this kinda odd, but they just put fish,ranging from little guppies to big-ass fish, in plastic bags and hang them all over the place.

another day we took a ferry over to one of the small outlying islands, called cheung chau, and rented one of these bad-ass bikes:

the island was actually really interesting, it had zero cars except for what you could call a police car. maybe a police golf cart. it was also great because it had a BEACH. it was great going from shivering-cold beijing one week to lying on a beach the next (not like it's bikini weather or anything but whatever). by the way, the news reports over here keep claiming were in the midst of a "winter monsoon" and my uncle tells me its "freezing" over here and everyone's all bundled up but hell, i think it's nice and toasty! it's great not thinking you're still on the verge of an icy death while bundled up in 4 layers of clothing.

another reason cheung chau was great:
the best mini egg tarts i've ever had in my entire life. they were piping hot out of the oven and it was fantastic. so fantastic that i took a picture of them, and then proceeded to write about them here days later.

oh, and apparently on the island, this is the "mini great wall".
i guess...

i love hong kong cause it gives me little flashbacks to my childhood. like these little plastic bubbles that you can blow using a straw and rubbery goop in a tube. i love goop! it's like being 5 years old again; fantastic!

then on john's birthday we went to the most magical place on the planet: disneyland. (ok well personally i think disneyworld, florida is the most magical place on the planet but hong kong disneyland can be the most magical place in china.) john got special treatment cause he got an "it's my birthday" button and evidently it was mandatory for all disney staff that passed by us to enthusiastically wish him a happy birthday. anyway, as many of you know, im a hardcore disney junkie so obviously i had a good time. oh, and i thought it was great how during the parade, alice in wonderland, all pasty white and blonde, 'speaks' in cantonese.
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and i lost all sense of being thrifty and the concept of "hey, im backpacking!im super poor!" and just bought up useless merchandise. but it was all worth it cause as you can see with just some of my purchases, wearing those mickey and minnie ears made us the coolest kids ever.

ok and i just posted this picture because i'm impersonating the little 5 year old girls over here that just work it for the camera. i apparently just dont know how to pose for the camera the way these kids too so i stole one of the girl's poses.
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and then today we went to a theme park called ocean park. it's super popular over here but we weren't really feeling it. it was super spread out with gondolas attaching the 2 halves of the park and you just had to walk everywhere. also it has the world's longest outdoor escalators or something like that. so basically it takes you like a year to get from place to place. i was also super choked cause the panda exhibit was closed for renos and im absolutely dying to see a fucking panda! it's ok, i'll live.

anyway, i'm digging hong kong and hong kong is making me fat. i'm harsh pigging out cause the food is so yummy and i'm turning into a total heffer but i figure, when will i be in hong kong again? i sure as hell won't be pigging out in cambodia and india! (i think. it's hard to say at this point). ok well im tired and i think i'll go have some ice cream before bed...

"ham & cheese & hong kong fun" -john

2007-01-25T18:38:00.000-08:00

ok that title's a little misleading since a) john made it up and it doesn't actually make sense and b) we haven't actually done anything in hong kong yet. this post is mostly about shanghai. it's our second day in hong kong and we're just lounging in the morning so i figured it's time for a new post. by the way, i've been uploading a whole shitload of videos sporadically in the post right under this one so check that out. they're pretty fucked up from being uploaded through youtube but i'll learn to live with it. i'm enjoying our little break from living developing nation-style. i'm also enjoying the fact that i finally have my own bed. in beijing we picked up a little stray brit by the name of alex and we took him home with us to hangzhou. like a little puppy. in effect, that meant that i got to sleep squished between him and john in one bed since only john's bedroom is heated. they seem to think i should have felt like the envy of women everywhere. i did not.

we took a day trip to shanghai and unfortunately it was a little disappointing. it's just a whole lotta tall buildings, shopping (generally i'd be all over that shit but since we're ghetto backpackers, i cannot afford it) and smog. however at the bund, which is where you see the famous shanghai skyline, we did see the most phallic building of all time, the oriental pearl tower. it's pink too just to top it off.

we took the wierdest tram ride under the water in the bund and it was just like a series of lasers, smoke machines and neon lights with spooky voices saying stuff like "METEOR SHOWER!!!", "EARTH'S CORE!!!" apparently you're supposed to feel like you're going through the earth as you can see in the description of the ride. i can safely say that that is exactly how we felt.

for some reason or another, the 'package' ticket we got for the tram included visits to an attached marine exhibit and the "china sex culture & sex health exhibition". seemed a little random to us but what the hell. i believe john thoroughly enjoyed the sex exhibit and he even bought a miniature version of this:

aaaanyway, the real highlight of our shanghai trip was.....

ok yeah that was totally silly and anti-climatic especially since you all could totally see the picture right off the bat. we ate copious amounts of swedish meatballs and it was heaven.

on our last day in hangzhou, we went to a SPA. i think the name of it was love story. yeah that's right, love story. and it was some wierd shit. we both got decked out in super sexy purple floral print capri outfits and proceeded to be ultimately lazy for a few hours. they massage you not just with their hands but knees, elbows, feet. they even kick at your inner thighs, it's interesting. and we had the whole deal where they hold onto poles attached to the ceiling and step all over you. anyway it was nothing like i'd ever experienced and i felt pretty damn good afterwards. oh and we both got pedicures.

and so we arrived in hong kong yesterday and didn't really do anything at all cause we had our massive backpacks on us so we ended up sitting outdoors at a cafe in the harbour for a couple hours. then we made ourselves a temporary little home in the mall foodcourt near my cousin's apartment, which is where we're staying, till he got off work. basically we looked like dirty hobos. but now we're nestled comfortably in the apartment and john has a new life partner, a little fluffy dog named little piggy. and now we're gonna head on out and explore the city finally so look forward to more posts from hong kong...

oh yeah! and i tried giving my men's camo jacket away since it's not freezing here, and it got rejected by a begger. he took it, went off and tried it on, and then came back to give it back to us. is that not insulting? i felt very hurt, deep within my very soul. i left the jacket out on a bench.

videos, for real this time

2007-01-25T07:13:00.000-08:00

so i'm in hong kong now and i'm too tired to write a good post so i just figured i'd put up some videos finally. the videos work but they're a little wonky; for some reason youtube fucked them up a bit and so the sound and quality's shit but it's better than nothing! you get the general idea of what we've been up to. i'll put up a post soon...

me & my mao watch lounging in tian'anmen square:

takin' our mini gondolas up closer to the great wall:

at the highest point we're allowed to go on the simatai great wall. and i'm in disbelief that my lungs are still intact and that my legs are still attached to the rest of my body:

livin' it up on a watchtower roof on the simatai great wall (and when you hear me say gross, it's cause john farted on purpose. so lovely):

john as a graceful swan on kunming lake, summer palace:

checkin' out the scene at the bund, shanghai:

super fun beijing videos

2007-01-21T04:56:00.000-08:00

hey ok videos simply will not load properly which is really unfortunate cause we've got some good ones. i've got videos uploading on both youtube and google video and they've been 'uploading' for about 6 hours....i'm just gonna go ahead and blame it on chinese censorship because it sounds more dramatic that way... i'll try again in hong kong!

"beijing is the new mojito"

2007-01-21T00:22:00.000-08:00

we just got back from beijing today so get ready for the mother of all massive super fantastic posts! so get comfortable cause this is gonna be a long one (but i guarantee it won't take you as long to read this as it did for me to put it all together. fuck.) ok and as for the title, it doesn't really make sense but just go with it... (sarah came up with it!) i'm feeling pretty tired but i'm happy cause we're finally doing laundry. as in i'll be washing my hoodie and fleece that i've been wearing every single day and my 2 pairs of pants for the first time since arriving in china. yum! well i think i'll have to use some organizational skills here and have sub-sections for this post just cause we did so much there that really, posting about so much all at one time is quite the feat. aren't i fancy shmancy!? so here we go:

:: day 1

so we took the uber long overnite train ride into beijing and well i guess i have to get over my claustraphobia cause it sure wasn't roomy. also, going on that train, i looked the absolute hottest i have ever looked. i wore john's alpine sweatpants and i think it really pulled together my whole new look. don't i look just sooo warm and cheerful all bundled up and cozy in my bunk?

we arrived in the afternoon and proceeded to wander on over to the forbidden city. me and mao mao:

side note, the entire time in beijing i would absolutely have to go into every single official olympics store i passed by to squeal and awwwww because i am madly in love with the olympics friendlies. AWWWWWW:

:: day 2

we went to the forbidden city but unfortunately what my audio guide told me was "the most magnificent building" was closed for renovations. (they did drape the entire building with a tarp that had a fucking life size PICTURE of the building though. i guess they figured that would be almost as good as seeing the building itself.) i ain't gonna let that get me down though!

this is the concubines' residence. it's nothing too special but you know i love me some wenches.

after that, we crossed the street over to the famous tian'anmen square where i proceeded to sprawl myself out in the middle of it and revel in its history and bloodshed. also where i bought my super fantastic arm-waving mao watch.

then that nite we wandered around in some of the outdoor markets. they sell some crazy shit there ranging from little terra cotta warrior statues to....saddam hussein playing cards. yay communism? actually i kinda wanted to buy the cards just cause that's so fucked up.

there was one street just lined with little food stands. apparently food includes scorpions and grasshoppers:

:: day 3

this was the big day: the great wall! so apparently like 90% of tourists go to the badaling great wall but we went to simatai which is about 3 hours from where we were staying. we took a bus into a town outside of beijing where we then had a private driver take us there and wait around for us to drive us back as well. he looked totally country and rocked long hair and a mean moustache, he was so gansta.
i think simatai's supposed to be the most authentic and challenging so clearly it wasn't my choice to go there but i'm glad we did. we saw hardly anybody else up there cause i guess only the hardcore travellers go there and at some parts you have to get in there with both hands to climb it. even climbing up to get to the wall i thought i was going to literally die. as you may recall, i thought walking up to the pagoda in hangzhou was going to be the end of me so imagine this ordeal! however, i did not die and after a little while it wasn't so bad. the air was super cold and crip, the sights were absolutely amazing and i felt very accomplished. anyway, we took like a kajillion pictures so here's just a selection of some of them:

we took these dinky little gondolas up to near the great wall. how romantic.

this is taken at the highest point we could climb to because any further was illegal to go on. so we parked our asses, took out our tube of chips and took it all in.

this is me frolicking around with my lovely little old great wall lady friend (more like she's helping me navigate the terrain cause im a pussy and she's like a super strong wonderwoman). she followed us around and chatted us up basically so that we would fall in love with her and buy souvenirs from her. she's super awesome at her job cause she's so adorable that i totally made john buy overpriced shit from her. i love her forever and always.

:: day 4

so the nite before we go to an all you can drink club with some people from our hostel and an old high school classmate and her foreigner posse. it was great times and resulted in me giggling and sitting in some danish boys' room at 5 am helping cut some dude's hair with mini scissors. however, this proved to not be such a great idea the following day. basically this day was a total write-off and i spent the day in pain from both the great wall (i am in horrid, horrid shape) and the club. we went to the china national museum and ended up falling asleep on a bench. at nite we went out for the famous peking duck. ours came with the duck's head under all the meat; a nice little surprise! his name is mr. quackers and he was pretty tasty.

:: day 5

so apparently cause i'm overeager and desperately want to make up for the previous day, i drag john outta bed super early and we go to the mao memorial hall. it was pretty fucked up. they sell flowers right outside and people just buy them up and lay them down in front of a giant statue of mao. basically they herd you in through the hall like cattle and you file past mao's dead body. this may seem kinda sick but the entire time i was just thinking of snow white (there's just always a disney connection with me) cause he was just lying there chilling in a glass coffin. so like snow white, cept not a hot babe and with soldiers and tons of security. plus his head seemed all lit up so he had kind of a creepy orange glow about him. anyway.....

then we went to the summer palace and its got a merchant street, a bunch of temples, a giant lake, an island...basically a massive playground for the royals.

in the middle of the palace is kunming lake and it was all frozen over so despite the "do not step on ice" signs plastered all over the place, we just had to join all the other punk-ass rebels out in the middle of the lake
.

there's a famous 'boat' on the shore of the lake and john decided to get up on it and do the titanic.

ok, ive been doing this post for literally hours, my ass hurts from sitting on the ground and i've had enough so that's it for now. i think we're going to pizza hut for dinner (they have tons of them out here and they're all super posh and popular) so we're off!

my t-shirt says "i climbed the great wall"

2007-01-18T05:08:00.001-08:00

greetings from beijing! this is gonna be a half-assed post cause the internet here at the hostel is majorly slow plus im dead tired. when we get back into hangzhou i'll put up a fat ass photo post but for now you'll have to be satisfied with just my brain dead rambling...

so after a lovely 14 hour train ride, we are now in beijing. we're staying in a little hostel in a hutong (alley) that's filled with cute little restaurants and stores. i'm in a 6 person dorm with a bunch of dudes but it's not so bad. one thing that has become very evident to me is that all bread they have here is sweet. as in you eat a ham and cheese sandwich, and it's sweet. pizza is sweet too. i find that kinda narsty and i'm not so sure that it'll grow on me but we shall see.

yesterday we went to the forbidden city which is pretty massive but now that we're champion walkers it was good times. i got one of those lame-o audio tour guides so i felt extra special. then we went to tian'anmen square (i'm unsure of the spelling right now which is minorly embarassing since well, i'm in china plus i took chinese poli sci but i'm just too damn lazy to look it up). i lounged around on the ground for a while and got the sweetest thing ever: a watch with mao on it and his arm waves according to the seconds passing. ok it's not the sweetest thing ever and by last nite it's no longer working but whatever. it's still some kinda awesome.

today we busted our asses over to the great wall. we didn't go to the super touristy section but rather the most bad-ass section. according to the lonely planet it's 'not for the faint of heart' or some such thing. we made a friend, the cutest little lady ever, and i love her forever. more like she followed us around and talked to us because she wanted us to buy shit from her but she was so adorable how could one resist!? so now me and johnny have matching "i climbed the great wall" t-shirts. we're just too cool. well i'll write a better post soon but now my time is running out so i'm off!

2007-01-18T05:08:00.000-08:00

i lied. another post from hangzhou.

2007-01-15T01:23:00.000-08:00

ok so i'm not in beijing yet. i'm still in hangzhou and im lazy today and john's intensely hungover so other than going out for an hour to buy pretz and, since it's gonna be freezing in beijing, a $20 big ol man's camoflauge jacket for myself (camo cause it reminds me slightly of my beloved TNA jacket and men's cause well apparently my silly limbs are too long for china clothing. even in size XL), we're just sitting in the apartment till we have to make the trek over to the train station. so i thought, fuck i'll just post some pictures! i mean, why not. it's like being productive!

the national silk museum:

the big touristy area:

awww. i heart communists.

there was tons and tons of street food there:
but what did us cool kids eat for lunch? that's right. hello warm, inviting golden arches.

and right next to the tourist area: extreme poverty. i felt like a bit of an asshole for taking this picture.

and here's who i've been hanging with in china. chinese people in china? psssh dont be silly. john and his euro crew:

that last one's a keeper for sure.

'cos i'm leaving, on my first train...

2007-01-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

so tonite we're going on an overnite train to beijing which should be interesting. i've never been on a train before let alone a super long one where i get to sleep on the very top bunk and piss in a hole or whatever. anyway, yesterday we went to a super touristy street which suited me just fine but my highlight of the day was fully bailing off a sidewalk into the road and spraining my hand. yay me! apparently i can run around in high heels drunk just fine but walk down a sidewalk wearing running shoes and stone cold sober? forget about it! so there you have it. i can finally move my hand again today but it's still kinda sore so wait for an update from beijing!

street food & temples & pagodas, oh my!

2007-01-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

ok before we get started here's the picture of me trying on quilted pjs that i promised you:
note how a size XL is still too fucking small. and also note how i appear to have a giant crotch bulge, hotness! alright, i don't wanna really think about that whole scene anymore so let's move on...
it's 10 am here and once again, i am comfortably huddled next to the heater so i think i'll take some time and post another whole slew of pictures while i still have unlimited internet access. so yesterday we walked around a whole bunch again. we stumbled into a street/alley that had a bunch of cooked on the spot food stalls and a big ass market:IMG_0169.JPG">aw lookit, it's a giant hanging dead....animal. (i ask john what it is. first he says rabbit. well that'd be one giant fucking rabbit! so he settles on "ummm...mystery meat").

on our continuous roaming of the city which, by the way, is supremely massive (6.4 million population!!!) i found there are a lot of 'hot dog carts' which greatly reminds me of vancouver. mmmm....street meat...except the hot dogs look like chinese sausages and they serve hot bubble tea.
and that last picture was just for kicks. john posing with a superb shoe ad. they just love them some white people over here.

after lunch we walked the other half of west lake and went to a couple of tourist traps but it was a lot of fun. we went to the temple of king qian and well this doesn't actually have anything to do with the site itself but i found it amusing how the girl who took our tickets excitedly said "welcome to hangzhou!" or something along those lines only after we had given her our tickets, gone in, wandered around and were now leaving. it was special.

while we were walking around the lake i ceasely was fascinated by this big ol' pagoda called lei feng pagoda on the horizon and we finally trekked our asses over there and it was fabulous. we had a right old laugh over how there was actually a fucking escalator that you can take up to it. and just for shock value, i opted to take the stairs. that's right people. diana + stairs by choice = the most unlikely combination. by the way, by the time we actually reached the pagoda and then took the stairs inside it to the very top as well i thought my lungs might explode and i'd fall over dead. i think i need to get in shape or something...

on one of the floors they had a bunch of really awesome intricate sculptures depicting various scenes associated with the pagoda:

in the pagoda itself you get the best view of the whole lake and the city:

apparently neither of us is particularly skilled at taking pictures of the both of us together. this is pretty much the best of the bunch. what can ya do!

anyway, i met a bunch of john's friends for dinner and well i suppose i shouldn't be surprised that the only people i've met in china are dutch, swiss and german. we then went to a foreigner's bar where i got to eat nachos and then immediately got to feel supremely bloated, yay! alright well today's a new day and i'll leave you all with a super adorable picture of me perched atop a lion. alright im not adorable but whatever! here's the picture:

first full day of china goodness

2007-01-12T03:32:00.000-08:00

so i'm having a bit of trouble posting because well everything on the blog website's in chinese and i can't read it so i hope y'all are enjoying my efforts! it's actually not too tragic because john's out for dinner with a friend and im too damn tired to move so i'm just at the apartment chilling (actually freezing my little ass off while trying to get as close to the electric heater as possible without ripping the laptop out of the wall) and this gives me something to do. basically im sacking out and taking my sweet, sweet time working on this post. it's gonna be chockful of pictures too which is exciting but probably won't happen too often in future posts since i imagine it'll take a shitload of time. by the way, back to the coldness (which happens to be humid coldness by the way, yum!), when im out i've taken to wearing a t-shirt, hoodie, fleece and gortex all together. so basically all the clothing i brought with me. it's so hot, i wonder why all the little asian boys haven't hit on me yet...

anyway, i woke up today at 8 am to the sound of fireworks. fireworks, why fireworks? you might ask. well i don't fucking know but there ya have it. we did a whole lotta roaming around today but before i get into that, i took a picture of a squat toilet. this one was actually pretty nice and clean and not too narsty cause it was outdoors so i guess the wretched stench of it all isn't contained. also be grateful that i didn't take a picture of the one that was full of shit (and yes, i wanted to barf just a little). so behold, squat toilet: oh how cute. an urinal in the ground. with a little basket for your 'feminine products' and feces-infested toilet paper that they don't provide! fantastic.

so moving on from toilets to food, a natural progression...i had my first real meal today since last nite i was still so nauseated by my bathroom experience i barely ate dinner. we had 60 cent handmade noodles in a tiny little joint in the side of a building and well, i took a picture of it. ta da, my first meal in china: by the way didn't that look suuuuper appetizing? especially since the picture immediately follows that of the toilet?
and afterwards we crossed the street and got acquainted with starbucks. the starbucks here are massive and like fancy restaurants.
odd, but i was grateful because it had (note the theme to my posts so far) real toilets! i was very excited by this by the way. how sad. then we wandered partially around this giant lake they have here which is really nice but it was all cold and rainy so i didn't get very fabulous pictures. but here are a few gems:
the lake is super massive so we didn't walk all the way around it today but maybe on a nicer day we will. you can take a variety of boats across it as well but i dont' particularly find that enticing. well at least not those dodgy little ones but maybe this bad-ass double-decker dragon boat i'd consider:

i also made my very first purchase today: plastic sleeve covers, they're all the rage! ok i don't know about that but they have this cartoon character on them from my childhood and that brings me great joy. john says they're for protecting your sleeves while eating; apparently chinese girls here are damn messy eaters. however im deeply saddened because i've already lost one of them!!! it's completely tragic but at least i have this picture to remember the pair of them by.

alright well i'm sure you all wanna see pictures so i'm just gonna post a random whack of them right now, and we're off! this is john john's swanky apartment! )

me on the bus! riveting, i know.

this is some year of the pig...thing. and a bunch of bicycles and mopeds which are huge here. people ride around all day long on bikes wearing ponchos.

this is a nice tree-lined walkway across the lake.

the entrance way to what i suppose is a neighbourhood...

and this is inside the humongous supermarket we get our groceries from:

alright well that's it from me for now! by the way i really appreciate all the comments people have left. (that's also a bit of a not so subtle hint that if you haven't commented yet, get your ass in gear and do it!) it's nice to know people are actually reading this! and now i will go dig into my nestea in a juice box and assortment of pretz sticks ranging from pizza to vegetable bacon flavours. deeeelish.

diana has landed in the motherland!

2007-01-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

so i've arrived in china as of last night and now its 8 am the next morning and its fucking freezing! there's only a heater in the bedroom and a dinky portable one out in the living room where i am. but at least im easing myself into this trip since im at john's apparently "upper, upper class" apartment. i'm just happy cause there's a real toilet! in that i've already had the magical experience of using a squat toilet! and lemme tell all you girls, it's as horrid as you would think. as in i was so grossed out i totally forgot to take a picture and then immediately lost my appetite. i am still completely traumatized.

side not here, im sorry if this entry doesn't totally make sense my body and brain are totally fucked from the travelling. as in almost 13 hours on a plane and then a 3 hour bus ride from shanghai to hangzhou, which is where john has been living. so i do apologize! moving on...

i haven't really done much so far but i guess i can write a recap anyway! so my first real stop in china was the squat toilet (major, major shudder here) and apparently it was already one of the nicer ones so i'm feeling pretty fucked. then we went and got some food and went to a big ass T&T-type superstore. got some food and i tried on quilted chinese pyjamas cause its so damn cold here. lets just say i looked retarded and john took a picture w/ my phone so i'll post it soon (as in when i unwrap myself with the blanket that im huddled in and go dig through my ziplock bag full of cords and chargers). oh but what's disturbing is that im a size XL here!!! i already miss being a size small. the salespeople here look at me like i'm sorta freak so i'm feeling a bit like a heffer! i'm also a lot taller than all the girls that i've seen so far. but also people look at me kinda funny cause they speak to me in mandarin and well, i dont know any.

other than that, i already blew up my mini hair dryer cause i didn't realize there's a voltage switch, silly me! R.I.P hair dryer. aaaand i ate tomato pretz but the ones here have cabbage powder and mashed potatoes in the ingredients which i found interesting. and then i watched part of "the devil wears prada" cause john has an extensive collection of bootleg dvds and konked out at like 11 pm. well it's a new day now and i don't know what we're gonna do today but look forward to more posts from the motherland!

i'm leavin' town!

2007-01-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

alright, well i'm gonna hyperventilate/shit a brick soon cause i gotta be at the airport by 5 am and it seems like there's still so much to do. i'm generally pretty high strung on an everyday basis so imagine me under actual stress! there's still packing to be done, saying goodbyes... so i will simply leave you all with a couple of pictures of the majority of the contents of my backpack:

while im only bringing 2 pairs of pants, i am bringing 14 pairs of panties. there are also bottles of body lotion in there that're labelled "baby gravy" and "spermies" (i have the best friends in the world!!!)
and the next time you all hear from me, i'll be in china!

The Stills - Destroyer

2007-01-05T11:13:00.001-08:00

so this has absolutely nothing to do with my trip but i'm lying in bed still sick with a cold so i figured could experiment with my blogging possibilities... and so i decided to share with y'all the song i've been absolutely obsessed with since june (plus i think the lead singer is smokin' hot, no joke). and by the way, im very impressed with myself that i managed to actually post this! im becoming much more technologically advanced with the development of this blog i like to think. enjoy!

one of my MEC expeditions

2007-01-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

im leaving in like a week and im starting to go into serious panic mode! so as im waiting for a couple of friends to arrive and hopefully calm my nerves, to pass the time i thought id post this picture of me and my T.O. amiga linda from my latest shopping trip to MEC last week. i kinda think we look like pumpkins.

the fowl edition: geese & ducklings

2007-01-01T22:17:00.001-08:00

i officially feel like a goose that's been stuffed to the max to produce foie gras. cept i wasn't force-fed, it was all completely voluntary. everyone said i should "bulk up" for my trip since the inevitable '3rd world runs' aka 'delhi belly' will probably slim me down and i think i may have done more than just a good job... thank you to booze, christmas and 4 am denny's 'dinners'! anyway, moving on.

for no particular reason, i feel like listing a random selection of some of the contents of my backpack:

-lonely planet: southeast asia on a shoestring
-$600 worth of prescriptions including 200 malaria pills
-2 lush solid shampoo bars
-a lil' LED light that's shaped like a turtle. it's fucking cute, dammit!
-a sleeping sheet (that's right, not even a sleeping bag. a sheet. but oooh it comes in a little sack!)
-my very first digital camera
-baby moo cow baby

ok so there is absolutely no continuity to this entry but that's just how it's going to be so stay with me people. this trip is resulting in some maaaaajorrrrr changes for me. first off, as some of you know i've had a constant sleeping companion since i was about 16. and that special someone is my moo cow baby. i tried stuffing him into my backpack but it just wouldn't happen and i thought i might collapse in a fit of despair but fortunately mike has gotten me a palm-sized moo cow baby (and from cow's ice cream in whistler at that. mmmmm.....)! it's a big change and the baby moo cow baby won't be able to replace my real moo cow but life will go on. here's a picture of the two of them together:

second of all, my physical appearance is changing as well. since i probably won't be able to shower and groom myself properly on my trip i just had my lil' cousin chop off my hair and here are pictures of her taking her scissors to my hair & the end results:

and so im trading in my longer hair, leather boots, matt & nat handbags and mini skorts and such for the shortest hair i've had in many years, running shoes (my first pair since i was like 15!), a MEC pack and cheap jeans. so basically im going from an ugly duckling to a full-fledged ultra sexy beast. i'll probably have to beat the boys off of me with a canoe paddle. you can witness the magical transformation for yourself as seen here:

exhibit A: ugly duckling

exhibit B: sexy beast

incredible, isn't it?

"this story ends in bloodshed..."

2006-12-28T10:08:00.001-08:00

hello boys and girls, welcome to my blog! and in case you were wondering, the title of my very first post is the very first line from one of my favourite albums of the year, the stills' without feathers. but in case you were not wondering, moving on quickly!

so i'm about to depart on my big fat trip to asia finally. its been much hyped with a lot of people thinking it would never happen but well whaddya know, it is! i will be with john roughly 96.24% of the time so that is why i gave this post its title. because inevitably one of us will try to maniacally murder the other. im thinking trying to rip out the other's throat with one's bare hands while foaming at the mouth, but only time will tell...

anyway i decided to write a blog even though im computer/internet-challenged because i like to (probably deludedly) think that everyone i know is insanely interested in my travels and are constantly eagerly awaiting news from me from abroad. but if not, well...please don't burst my lil' bubble. so i plan on writing on here hopefully once a week which may prove to be overly ambitious but i'll give it my best shot. i'll also try to post pictures so you all can see how ruggedly hot i am all unshowered and in my running shoes and backpack. oh and so you can see pictures of all the various places i go of course. of course!

so right now i've just had my 7th and final shot and am now awaiting my doctor's appointment so i can get super hooked up with prescription meds. feeling a little woozy so a nap's seeming miiiiighty enticing right about now... anyway please please read my blog (that's right, im practically begging) and please please leave me comments so i can feel somewhat loved. and also, perhaps more importantly, so that i can be reminded that i have social ties other than just john and then i won't go completely insane and have to murder him after all.